



v\ 



- } j 


















GtEORGrE HENRY LEWES 



THE 



Principles of Success 



LITERATURE 



, 1 EDITED 

WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 

BY 

FEED K SCOTT, Ph.D. 

Assistant Professor of Rhetoric in the University of Michigan 





Boston 

ALLYN AND BACON 

1891 






Copyright, 1891, 
By FRED N. SCOTT. 



X* 



Typography by J. S. Cushing & Co., Boston. 
Presswork by Berwick & Smith, Boston. 



o 



PREFACE. 



The editor's purpose in reprinting this admirable little treatise 
on literature is, primarily, to make it accessible to his own classes 
in rhetoric and literary criticism. It has been his custom, as it 
doubtless is that of many other teachers of rhetoric, to supplement 
the text-book by reference to various sources of information upon 
psychology, logic, language, and aesthetics. Books on these topics, 
written by persons who know what they are writing about, neither 
too abstruse nor too much diluted with sentiment, are singularly 
few in number. Professor A. S. Cook did good service, therefore, 
to teachers and students alike, when, in 1885, he brought these 
Fortnightly articles again to general attention by reprinting them 
in pamphlet form. Hardly any other work on literature with which 
I am acquainted is so thoroughly sound in principle, and at the 
same time so suggestive and inspiring. Lewes's essay has, too, 
what is noticeably lacking in many better known writings, a 
bracing, healthful tone. The customary sentimentalizing about 
the glories of literature is reduced to a minimum. Literary and 
critical superstitions of various kinds are ruthlessly picked in pieces. 
It is just the work to go into the hands of that hope and despair 
of the teacher of rhetoric, — the callow young man with a sneaking 
ambition for literature, much sentiment, and a decided relish for 
rhetorical decoration. 

The book may be used in the class-room in a great variety of 
ways. The writer's preference is for what may be called a rudi- 
mentary form of the seminary method. The members of the class 
are not asked to recite as from a text-book, but, having read the 
treatise, or a portion of it, with much care, are encouraged to dis- 
cuss with the instructor and with one another, as many of the 
important points as the time will allow. Advantage may be taken 
of the interest thus aroused to suggest other lines of reading. In 
this way the student will be led to undertake original research, 

3 



4 Preface. 

and ultimately, perhaps, to do a little independent thinking for 
himself. For this purpose, the references given in the foot-notes 
may be of some service. 

For the matter to be found in the Introduction the editor is 
largely indebted to the writings of Mr. Lewes himself, who has 
put into his essays and the prefaces to his works not a little revela- 
tion of his own mental development. The following list of sources 
may be of use to those who wish to supplement the biographical 
and critical sketch by further reading : Cooke's ' George Eliot,' 
chap. ii. ; Miss Blind's ' George Eliot,' chap. vi. ; Trollope's article 
in the Fortnightly Review for Jan. 1, 1879 ; Harrison's notice in the 
Academy for Dec. 7, 1878; McCarthy's * George Eliot and George 
Lewes ' in The Galaxy, Yol. VII., p. 801 ; Popular Science Monthly, 
Vol. IX., p. 743 ; Professor Robertson's review of ' The Physical 
Basis of Mind,' in Mind, Vol. III., p. 24; the chapter on Lewes 
in Ribot's ' English Psychology,' pp. 255-314; the article, < Lewes,' 
in Brockhaus's ' Conversation s-Lexikon ' ; and the article by Mr. 
James Sully in the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica.' I have to thank 
Mr. Sully for directing me to an article by him in the New Quar- 
terly Review, N. S., Vol. II., p. 371, though the article itself, not 
being in the University Library, has not been accessible. I am 
also indebted to Professor I. N". Demmon for much-needed criti- 
cisms, and for numerous suggestions, which, could I have carried 
them all out, would have made the edition far better than it is. 

FRED N. SCOTT. 
Ann Arbor, May, 1891. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Introduction 7 



CHAPTER I. 

Causes of Success and Failure in Literature, and Division 
of the Subject. 

i. Object of the Treatise 19 

ii. Success a Test of Merit 23 

iii. Causes of Failure 30 

iv. The Three Laws of Literature 33 



CHAPTER II. 

The Principle of Vision. 

i. Value of Insight and Personal Experience 37 

ii. Psychology of Mental Vision 42 

iii. Vision the Criterion of Genius 48 

CHAPTER m. 

Of Vision in Art. 

i. The Imagination 57 

ii. Distinct Images Necessary 69 

iii. Burke on Indistinct Imagery 74 

iv. Imagination and Memory 79 

v. Idealism and Realism 82 

5 



6 Contents. 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Principle of Sincerity. 

page 
i. Literature and the Public 86 

ii. The Value of Sincerity 91 

iii. Sincerity as related to Vision 99 

CHAPTER V. . 
The Principle of Beauty. 

i. The Secret of Style 107 

ii. Imitation of the Classics Ill 

iii. Style in Philosophical and Scientific Literature 119 

iv. Style in the Sense of Treatment 122 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Laws of Style. 

i. Method of Inquiry 126 

ii. The Law of Economy 128 

iii. The Law of Simplicity 133 

iv. The Law of Sequence 143 

v. The Law of Climax 154 

vi. The Law of Variety 157 



INTRODUCTION. 



oX^o 



LIFE AND WORKS. 



George Henry Lewes/ grandson of Charles Lee Lewes, 
the comedian, was born in London, April 18, 1817. His 
schooling was given him first in London, then in Jersey, 
then in Brittany, where he was half Gallicized, and finally 
under a fine teacher, Dr. Burney, at Greenwich. Upon 
leaving school, he tried law and commerce, but gave them 
up because they were not to his liking. A natural bent 
toward science drew him into medicine. He mastered the 
theory of anatomy and physiology, but because he could 
not endure the strain of the operating-room, gave up this 
pursuit also. He turned his attention next to philosophical 
studies. At eighteen he had projected a physiological in- 
terpretation of the Scottish school of philosophy. At 
twenty an attempt to deliver a series of lectures on the 
same subject convinced him that he knew too little philoso- 
phy to offer an independent judgment. It was to supply 
this deficiency, we may suppose, that the years 1838-39 
were spent in philosophical study in Germany. There he 
came under influences that permanently modified the ten- 
dencies of his thought. What these influences were, we 
may see from an article on c Hegel's ^Esthetics/ written by 
him and published in the British and Foreign Eevieto for 
January, 1842. "If any man, says he (p. 41), "is worth 
knowing in the philosophical department, it is Hegel." In 

1 Pronounced Lu'iss. 



8 Introduction. 

another place he quotes with approval the opinion of Gans, 
that progress in philosophy is possible only in the complete 
development of all that is contained in the Hegelian system 
after the Hegelian method. While in this state of admiring 
discipleship, Lewes became acquainted with the writings of 
August Comte and J. S. Mill, and soon became a convert to 
Positivism. " More intrepid absurdity it would be difficult 
to find" is the judgment pronounced on Hegel's ' Logic' 
three years later in the ' Biographical History of Philoso- 
phy.' 1 ' The History,' the only popular history of philosophy 
ever published, closes with a glorification of Comte. The 
latter is lauded as the discoverer of a method which is the 
only valid one in philosophy because it is the only one 
elaborated from the sciences, yet possessing the generality 
of metaphysical doctrines. This position Lewes maintained 
for many years, then gradually abandoned as he became less 
interested in bare facts and more interested in their mean- 
ing. The closing years of his life saw him steadily drifting 
away from Positivism and verging more and more toward 
the beliefs of his earlier years. 

In the meantime, he did a prodigious amount of writing 
in the most varied fields. In 1846 he published a little 
work on i The Spanish Drama ' full of original criticisms of 



1 Nevertheless, per fas ant nefas, such merit as the ' History ' possessed 
it owed to Lewes's study of Hegel. Its chief value lay in that it exhibited 
to English readers the different systems of philosophy not as " a museum 
of mental aberrations," but as stages of thought growing naturally one out 
of another, and that idea came to Lewes straight from Hegel's ' Geschichte 
der Philosophic' Lewes's unsympathetic treatment of the German philos- 
opher is to be attributed partly, no doubt, to the violence of a convert in 
the first fury of reaction, but more to the intensely dogmatic nature of the 
historian. He had avowedly set himself the task of proving the futility 
of philosophical speculation, and he therefore found it necessary (though 
he writes the chapter with manifest irritation) to reduce his subject matter 
to those " barren forms of thought," with which, in Hegel's own words, 
" Philosophy has nothing to do." A more appreciative account will be 
found in ' Problems of Life and Mind/ 1st series, Vol. II., Appendix B. 



Life and Works. 9 

Calderon and Lope de Vega, and intended to correct the 
exaggerated judgments pronounced on these two Spanish 
poets by Schlegel. Two novels, ' Eanthorpe ' and i Eose, 
Blanche, and Violet/ appeared in 1847 and 1848 respectively, 
and were feeble successes. A ' Life of Eobespierre ? came 
out in 1849. From 1849 to 1854, Lewes was editor of the 
Leader, a weekly literary and political journal, contributing 
to its columns a story entitled 'The Apprenticeship of Life/ 
a series of essays on Comte's Philosophy, afterwards pub- 
lished separately, and reviews and dramatic criticisms with- 
out number. ( The Noble Heart/ a drama of some merit 
(written in 1841), was published in 1850, and was followed, 
the next year, by i The Game of Speculation/ In 1853 Lewes 
was united to Marian Evans, better remembered as George 
Eliot, went to Weimar, and while there finished his best- 
known work, the ' Life and Works of Goethe/ This was 
published in 1855. It has been described as " an opinion- 
ated book, controversial, egotistic, and unnecessarily criti- 
cal." Doubtless it possesses all these bad qualities ; yet if 
taken up when one is young and ambitious, and just begin- 
ning the study of German, perhaps there is no other book 
in existence that can so fire the student with an enthusiasm 
for letters. 

Erom this time on, Lewes paid less attention to literature, 
and more to the study of biology, physiology, and kindred 
subjects. In 1858 he read a paper before the British Asso- 
ciation for the Advancement of Science on 'The Spinal Cord 
as a Centre of Sensation and Volition/ In the same year 
two works of a less severely scientific character came from 
his pen, — ( Seaside Studies \ and c Physiology of Common 
Life/ At this time his researches were directed mainly into 
the phenomena of the nervous system, upon which subject 
three papers were published in 1859. He conceived the 
idea that he might approach the complex nervous structure 
of man by a preliminary study of the simpler organizations 



10 Introduction. 

found in animals. One result of these researches was a 
series of articles in the Cornhill Magazine for 1860 on 
6 Studies in Animal Life/ reprinted the next year in book 
form. Becoming convinced, however, that his method was 
wrong, he turned back to the study of man. 1 l Aristotle : 
A Chapter from the History of Science/ written in 1862, 
but not published until 1864, was the outcome of a search 
for a satisfactory scientific method. From this time until 
his death he was occupied with metaphysical speculations 
and with what is now commonly known as physiological 
psychology, the physiological mechanism of feeling and 
thought. The results of these researches were embodied 
in a series of volumes which he called 'Problems of Life 
and Mind.' The first two appeared in 1873-74 under the 
name i The Foundations of a Creed.' • The third, on i The 
Physical Basis of Mind/ was published in 1877. Lewes 
died November 30, 1 878. His posthumous works comprised 
the third series of l Problems of Life and Mind/ and two 
volumes on psychology. 

The writings that have been mentioned, numerous as 
they seem, are far from exhausting the sum of Lewes's lit- 
erary activity. In 1867 he wrote the letter-press to Kaul- 
bach's ' Female Characters of Goethe.' In 1875 he published 
one of his most readable volumes, ( Actors and the Art of 
Acting/ made up of critical notices written for the Pall 
Mall Gazette and other journals. He was an indefatigable 
contributor to all the prominent reviews of his time, his 
choice of subjects ranging from Plato to Charles Dickens, 
from Spinoza to President Lincoln. It may be said that as 
Berzelius was the last general chemist, so Lewes, in this 
age of literary specialization, was perhaps the last general 
litterateur, No man, it is likely, will ever again find it 
possible to be a fairly successful journalist, novelist, critic, 

1 ' Problems of Life and Mind.' Introduction. 



Life and Works. 11 

biographer, and essayist, and at the same time to write like 
a specialist upon chemistry, biology, language, sociology, 
physiology, and philosophy. In all these fields Lewes did 
brilliant, if not always sterling, work. To some he made 
original contributions of lasting importance. Altogether, 
he was one of the most astonishingly versatile men that 
our modern civilization has produced. 

With the details of his scientific and philosophical re- 
searches we are not here especially concerned. It may be 
said, in brief, that his most important contribution to physi- 
ological psychology was his doctrine of the functional 
indifference of the nerves. He maintained ('Problems of 
Life and Mind/ 2d series, Prob. II.) that all nerve-tissue 
has just the one common property, sensibility. The differ- 
ence in the sensations that arise when eye and ear are 
stimulated, result, therefore, not from a difference in the 
function of the optic and auditory nerves, but from differ- 
ences in the structure of the eye and ear themselves. To 
explain organic phenomena, he proposed to extend to tis- 
sues and organs the principle of competition, or natural 
selection, which Darwin applied to organisms. (' Problems 
of Life and Mind/ 2d series, Prob. I.) In the field of 
psychology, Lewes claimed to be the first (he was, perhaps, 
the first Englishman) to insist that the mind be studied 
not only as an individual, but as a unit in the social organ- 
ism. (< Problems of Life and Mind/ 1st series, Introduc- 
tion, Pt. II.) His metaphysical speculations include 
inquiries into the limitations of knowledge, the meaning of 
force and cause, the principles of certitude, and the nature 
of the absolute. His discussion of the relation of cause 
and effect, which Mr. Sully regards as perhaps his most 
noteworthy contribution, is based upon a passage from 
HegePs i Logic ? : " The effect is necessary just because it is 
the manifestation of the cause, or is this necessity which 
the cause is." (< Problems of Life and Mind/ 1st series, 



12 Introduction. 

Prob. V., Chapter III.) Lewes began his labors as a physio- 
logical interpreter of metaphysics ; he closed them as a meta- 
physical interpreter of physiological phenomena. Probably 
we shall not go far wrong if we see, in the growing interest 
with which, in his later years, he turned to the speculative 
aspect of the problems he was discussing, the gradual 
emergence of those ideas and modes of thought which his 
early studies in German philosophy had made part and 
parcel of his mental organization. 

4 THE PRINCIPLES OE SUCCESS.' 

The circumstances that led to the composition of the 
treatise in which we are especially interested, have been 
purposely left for separate consideration. "Early in the 
year 1865," says Anthony Trollope {Fortnightly Review for 
January, 1879), " a few men, better perhaps acquainted with 
literature than trade, conceived the idea, — an idea by no 
means new, — of initiating a literary ( organ ? which should 
not only be good in its literature, but strictly impartial and 
absolutely honest." The literary organ thus conceived was 
the Fortnightly Revieiv, which made its first appearance 
May 15, 1865, and for two years thereafter bore the name 
of George Henry Lewes as editor upon its title-page. In 
the opening number of the new periodical the editor began 
a series of papers entitled 'The Principles of Success in 
Literature/ The first number was probably written with- 
out much forethought as to the exact nature or extent of 
the treatise, except that it was to sound the literary key- 
note of the magazine ; but before the second instalment 
appeared the outline was seemingly settled upon, for the 
subsequent papers are entitled ' chapters ; and are logically 
subdivided. Chapter II. appeared June 1, Chapter III. 
July 15, Chapter IV. August 1, Chapter V. September 1, 
and Chapter VI. November 1. The purpose of the series, 



Theory of Literature. 13 

as stated by the author, is practical. It is to open the eyes 
of young men of talent and show them how their powers 
are perhaps being misdirected. This it aims to do by ex- 
pounding the laws which give literary power its efficiency, 
which govern, that is to say, the relation of the successful 
author to his public. But in doing this last, it is necessary 
to set forth the principles that underlie all artistic pro- 
duction. Thus the treatise, while losing nothing on the 
practical side, becomes unavoidably a contribution to the 
theory of aesthetics. 

THEOEY OF LITERATURE. 

The plan of treatment is simple because fundamental. 
Literature, though nowhere explicitly defined, is every- 
where assumed to be the record of all that is worthiest in 
human thought, the expression in language of those feel- 
ings and speculations which men hold the dearest and the 
truest. "It stores up the accumulated experience of the 
race, connecting past and present into a conscious unity ." 
Its aim is the effective expression of truth. If this be the 
character of literature, it is obvious that the investigator 
has to deal, not with some parasitical growth on human 
intelligence, but with intelligence itself. His treatment can- 
not, therefore, be exhaustive unless he make his field the 
whole nature of man. This is the task that Lewes set him- 
self. By viewing literature successively from three points 
of view, the intellectual, the ethical, and the aesthetic, he 
aimed to traverse the whole circle of man's nature. He 
proposed to show that only when all three aspects of man's 
mental activity come to expression simultaneously, is it 
possible to have that utterance of the whole concrete truth 
which constitutes literature in the true sense. If the 
writer sees clearly (has Imagination, or Vision), if he re- 
ports with fidelity what he sees (is sincere), if his manner 



14 Introduction. 

of expression is perfectly adequate to the matter (is beau- 
tiful) , his work has all the value that the writer, being what 
he is, can hope to give it. If success do not follow, at 
any rate the only conditions that make success possible will 
have been met. It is obtainable upon no other terms. If 
all other rewards fail, one, at least, cannot be withheld — 
the consciousness of worthy labor faithfully performed. 

Lewes has not elaborated these three principles system- 
atically. His aim, as generally elsewhere, is to stimulate 
thought and combat error, rather than to present a well- 
rounded theory. He is less concerned with proof than with 
enforcement. The opening paragraph gives promise of a 
strictly scientific treatment, but this formal style is soon 
cast aside for a more popular method of presentation ; and 
although at times, as in discussing the nature of imagination, 
and again in formulating the laws of style, he returns to 
something like a scientific preciseness, it is mainly by fer- 
tile suggestion, by apt illustration, by the impulsive flash- 
ing-in of brilliant side-lights, that he brings home to the 
reader the meaning of the three-fold truth, whose aspects 
are Vision, Sincerity, and Beauty. Of the six chapters, the 
one on Sincerity comes nearest to the fulfilment of its 
purpose, the one on Beauty farthest from such fulfilment. 
Lewes leaves no question as to what he means by Vision 
and Sincerity ; he gives very little enlightenment as regards 
the fundamental character of Beauty and its relation to the 
other principles. The last two chapters, so far as their 
bearing upon aesthetic theory is concerned, have an air of 
superfluity. The truth is, they are superfluous. The aes- 
thetic field is covered in the foregoing chapters. The 
Vision and Sincerity then spoken of are Artistic Vision 
and Sincerity, aside from which Beauty has no existence. 
To separate Beauty from the other principles, to set it off 
as a mysterious something that escapes analysis, is simply 
to create an abstraction. This Lewes seems to recognize 



Influences. 15 

when at the close he returns to the safe ground of Sincerity 
as a basis for the Law of Variety. If in Chapters II.-IV. 
he had confined his attention to Vision in Science and Sin- 
cerity in Conduct, then unquestionably he would have left 
room for a chapter on Beauty in Art. As it is, in spite of 
the author's protestations, the reader gets the false impres- 
sion that style is something more than clear vision sincerely 
expressed, that it must be something more simply because 
two extra chapters are devoted to it. These remarks apply 
to the theory as a whole. The richness and suggestiveness 
of the particulars in Chapters IV. and V. are not questioned. 

INFLUENCES. 

For the germinal idea of the treatise, Lewes, in the 
opinion of the present writer, was largely indebted to 
HegePs <Aesthetik. ? In the article in the British and 
Foreign Review, before referred to, 1 he calls attention to the 
difference between the Germans and the English in their 
treatment of art. The former, he says, " consider that as 
Art is a production, a creation of the mind of man, the real 
way to set about its examination must be the investigation 
of those laws of the mind from whence it proceeds : thus 
they examine the germ to know the psychology of the 
flower ; and thus it becomes itself a branch of psychology. 
. . . The laws, then, of aesthetics, when truly analyzed and 
posited, are immutable ; for they are not those of taste and 
fashion, but the eternal principles of the human mind." 
He adds that HegePs i Aesthetik ? is " the most delightful, 
thought-inciting, and instructive work on the subject we 
have yet met with, and that four years' constant study of it 

1 The article is an unusually suggestive one. Matthew Arnold seems to 
have borrowed from it several ideas for his essays on ' The Function of 
Criticism ' and ' The Influence of Academies.' See especially pp. 38-39, 
with which compare ' Essays in Criticism,' pp. 4, 8-9, 48-50. 



16 Introduction. 

has only served the more to impress us with its depth and 
usefulness." Among other passages from the ' Aesthetik/ 
he quotes the following, in his own translation : — 

" Art fulfils its highest mission when it has thus estab- 
lished itself with religion and philosophy in the one circle 
common to all, and is merely a method of revealing the 
Godlike to man, of giving utterance to the deepest interests, 
the most comprehensive truths pertaining to mankind. In 
works of art nations have deposited the most holy, the 
richest and intensest of their ideas, and for the understand- 
ing of the philosophy and religion of a nation, art is mostly 
the only key we can attain." (< Aesthetik/ I., p. 11.) 

Elsewhere (< Aesthetik/ p. 72) Hegel states, more explic- 
itly, that "art has the vocation of revealing the truth 
in the form of sensuous artistic shape." This is the view 
which we find Lewes adopting when he comes to speak of 
the highest of the arts, the art of literature. To this 
source we may trace his fundamental aesthetic conceptions. 
For the particulars with which he developed these concep- 
tions he drew from a great variety of sources. The article 
mentioned gives evidence that his reading on the theory of 
art had covered a wide range. He quotes Horace, Burke, 
Cousin, Jouffroy, Quatremere de Quincey, George Sand, 
Kant, Schiller, Goethe, Bickter, Schlegel, Ulrici, Sidney, 
Carlyle, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, B. H. Home, and 
J. S. Mill, and shows acquaintance with the aesthetics of 
Plato, Aristotle, Longinus, Baumgarten, Lessing, Winckel- 
mann, Herder, Novalis, Tieck, Solger, Kuge, Bode, Muller, 
and Ste.-Beuve. Buskin, Emerson, and De Quincey were 
fresh in mind when the ( Principles of Success ' was in 
process of composition. It is perhaps worth noting that 
the characters which Buskin sets down as constituting 
greatness of style (' Modern Painters,' III., Chapter III.), 
are Choice of Noble Subject, Love of Beauty, Sincerity, 
and Invention, 



The Present Edition. 17 



THE PKESENT EDITION. 

The papers as printed in the Fortnightly are marred by 
an unusual number of typographical errors and slips of the 
pen. The quotations are uniformly inaccurate, as e.g., 
'creeping' for 6 sweeping ' in § 79, ' photographer ' for ' to- 
pographer ' in § 120, ' Prista ' for ' Orissa ' in § 195. Prof. 
A. S. Cook's reprint (San Francisco, 1885) was a faithful re- 
production of the original. In the present edition changes 
have been made wherever needed to bring quoted matter 
into conformity with some standard text. Otherwise, save 
for the addition of the section headings in Chapters I.-V., 
and the correction of some very obvious inconsistencies, the 
text has been allowed to stand unaltered. 



THE PRINCIPLES OF SUCCESS 
IN LITERATURE. 

CHAPTER I. 

CAUSES OF SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN LITERATURE, AND 
DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. 

i. Object of the Treatise. 

1. In the development of the great series of animal organ- 
isms, the Nervous System assumes more and more of an 
imperial character. The rank held by any animal is deter- 
mined by this character, and not at all by its bulk, its 
strength, or even its utility. In like manner, in the devel- 
opment of the social organism, as the life of nations becomes 
more complex, Thought assumes a more imperial character ; 
and Literature, in its widest sense, becomes a delicate index 
of social evolution. Barbarous societies show only the 
germs of literary life. But advancing civilization, bringing 
with it increased conquest over material agencies, disengages 
the mind from the pressure of immediate wants, and the 
loosened energy finds in leisure both the demand and the 
means of a new activity : the demand, because long unoc- 
cupied hours have to be rescued from the weariness of 
inaction ; the means, because this call upon the energies 
nourishes a greater ambition and furnishes a wider arena. 

2. Literature is at once the cause and the effect of social 
progress. It deepens our natural sensibilities, and strength- 

19 



20 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

ens by exercise our intellectual capacities. It stores up the 
accumulated experience of the race, connecting Past and 
Present into a conscious unity ; and with this store it feeds 
successive generations, to be fed in turn by them. As its 
importance emerges into more general recognition, it neces- 
sarily draws after it a larger crowd of servitors, filling noble 
minds with a noble ambition. 

3. There is no need in our day to be dithyrambic on the 
glory of Literature. Books have become our dearest com- 
panions, yielding exquisite delights and inspiring lofty aims. 
They are our silent instructors, our solace in sorrow, our 
relief in weariness. With what enjoyment we linger over 
the pages of some well-loved author! With what grati- 
tude we regard every honest book ! Friendships, profound 
and generous, are formed with men long dead, and with men 
whom we may never see. The lives of these men have a 
quite personal interest for us. Their homes become as con- 
secrated shrines. Their little ways and familiar phrases 
become endeared to us, like the little ways and phrases of 
our wives and children. 

4. It is natural that numbers who have once been thrilled 
with this delight should in turn aspire to the privilege of 
exciting it. Success in Literature has thus become not only 
the ambition of the highest minds, it has also become the 
ambition of minds intensely occupied with other means of 
influencing their fellows — with statesmen, warriors, and 
rulers. Prime ministers and emperors have striven for dis- 
tinction as poets, scholars, critics, and historians. Unsatis- 
fied with the powers and privileges of rank, wealth, and 
their conspicuous position in the eyes of men, they have 
longed also for the nobler privilege of exercising a generous 
sway over the minds and hearts of readers. To gain this 
they have stolen hours from the pressure of affairs, and disre- 
garded the allurements of luxurious ease, laboring stead- 
fastly, hoping eagerly. Nor have they mistaken the value 



Causes of Success and Failure. 21 

of the reward. Success in Literature is, in truth, the blue 
ribbon of nobility. 

5. There is another aspect presented by Literature. It 
has become a profession : to many a serious and elevating 
profession ; to many more a mere trade, having miserable 
trade-aims and trade-tricks. As in every other profession, 
the ranks are thronged with incompetent aspirants, without 
seriousness of aim, without the faculties demanded by their 
work. They are led to waste powers which in other direc- 
tions might have done honest service, because they have 
failed to discriminate between aspiration and inspiration, 
between the desire for greatness and the consciousness of 
power. Still lower in the ranks are those who follow Lit- 
erature simply because they see no other opening for their 
incompetence ; just as forlorn widows and ignorant old 
maids thrown suddenly on their own resources open a 
school — no other means of livelihood seeming to be within 
their reach. Lowest of all are those whose esurient vanity, 
acting on a frivolous levity of mind, urges them to make 
Literature a plaything for display. To write for a liveli- 
hood, even on a complete misapprehension of our powers, is 
at least a respectable impulse. To play at Literature is alto- 
gether inexcusable : the motive is vanity, the object noto- 
riety, the end contempt. 

6. I propose to treat of the Principles of Success in Lit- 
erature, in the belief that if a clear recognition of the prin- 
ciples which underlie all successful writing could once be 
gained, it would be no inconsiderable help to many a young 
and thoughtful mind. Is it necessary to guard against a 
misconception of my object, and to explain that I hope 
to furnish nothing more than help and encouragement ? 
There is help to be gained from a clear understanding of 
the conditions of success ; and encouragement to be gained 
from a reliance on the ultimate victory of true principles. 
More than this can hardly be expected from me, even on 



22 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

the supposition that I have ascertained the real conditions. 
No one, it is to be presumed, will imagine that I can have 
any pretension of giving recipes for Literature, or of fur- 
nishing power and talent where nature has withheld them. 
I must assume the presence of the talent, and then assign 
the conditions under which that talent can alone achieve 
real success. No man is made a discoverer by learning the 
principles of scientific Method ; but only by those principles 
can discoveries be made ; and if he has consciously mastered 
them, he will find them directing his researches and saving 
him from an immensity of fruitless labour. It is something 
in the nature of the Method of Literature that I propose to 
expound. Success is not an accident. All Literature is 
founded upon psychological laws, and involves principles 
which are true for all peoples and for all times. These 
principles we are to consider here. 1 

1 As Lewes offers no formal definition of Literature, a few of the most 
noteworthy are here given : " By Letters or Literature is meant the expres- 
sion of thought in Language, where by ' thought ' I mean the ideas, feelings, 
views, reasonings, and other operations of the human mind." (Newman, 
1 Idea of a University,' p. 291.) — " We may be coDtent to set out with a 
rough definition of literature as consisting of works which, whether in verse 
or prose, are the handicraft of imagination rather than reflection, aim at 
the pleasure of the greatest possible number of the nation rather than 
instruction and practical effects, and appeal to general rather than special- 
ized knowledge." (Posnett, ' Comparative Literature,' p. 18.) — " The rep- 
resentation ... of a specific personality in its preference, its volition 
and power. Such is the matter of imaginative or artistic literature — this 
transcript, not of mere fact, but of fact in its infinite variety, as modified 
by human preference in all its infinitely varied forms." (Pater, ' Apprecia- 
tions,' pp. 6-7.) — " The written thoughts and feelings of intelligent men and 
women arranged in a way that shall give pleasure to the reader." (Brooke, 
'English Literature,' p. 1.) — " Literature consists of all the books . . . 
where moral truth and human passion are touched with a certain largeness, 
sanity, and attraction of form." (J. Morley, ' On the Study of Literature,' 
pp. 39-40.) — "All knowledge that reaches us through books is literature." 
(Arnold, * Discourses in America,' p. 90.) Cf . Dowden's ' Transcripts and 
Studies,' pp. 237-240; Laurie's 'Lectures on Language,' pp. 81-104; Nettle- 
ship's ' The moral Influence of Literature ' ; J. Morley 's ' Voltaire,' pp. 13-15 ; 
Taine's ' History of English Literature,' Introduction; DeQuincey's essay 
on ' Pope,' and ' Letters to a Young Man,' III, 



Causes of Success and Failure. 23 



ii. Success a Test of Merit 

7. The rarity of good books in every department, and the 
enormous quantity of imperfect, insincere books, has been 
the lament of all times. The complaint being as old as 
Literature itself, we may dismiss without notice all the 
accusations which throw the burden on systems of educa- 
tion, conditions of society, cheap books, levity and super- 
ficiality of readers, and analogous causes. ISTone of these 
can be a vera causa; though each may have had its special 
influence in determining the production of some imperfect 
works. The main cause I take to be that indicated in 
Goethe's aphorism : " In this world there are so few voices 
and so many echoes. " Books are generally more deficient 
in sincerity than in cleverness. Talent, as will become 
apparent in the course of our inquiry, holds a very sub- 
ordinate position in Literature to that usually assigned to 
it. Indeed, a cursory inspection of the Literature of our 
day will detect an abundance of remarkable talent — that 
is, of intellectual agility, apprehensiveness, wit, fancy, and 
power of expression — which is nevertheless impotent to 
rescue "clever writing" from neglect or contempt. It is 
unreal splendour ; for the most part mere intellectual fire- 
works. In Life, as in Literature, our admiration for mere 
cleverness has a touch of contempt in it, and is very unlike 
the respect paid to character. And justly so. No talent 
can be supremely effective unless it act in close alliance 
with certain moral qualities. (What these qualities are 
will be specified hereafter. 1 ) 

8. Another cause, intimately allied with the absence of 
moral guidance just alluded to, is misdirection of talent. 
Valuable energy is wasted by being misdirected. Men are 

1 See, in particular, § 101. 






24 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

constantly attempting, without special aptitude, work for 
which special aptitude is indispensable. 

" On peut etre honnete homme et faire mal des vers." 1 

9. A man may be variously accomplished, and yet be a 
feeble poet. He may be a real poet, yet a feeble dramatist. 
He may have dramatic faculty, yet be a feeble novelist. 
He may be a good story-teller, yet a shallow thinker and a 
slip-shod writer. For success in any special kind of work 
it is obvious that a special talent is requisite ; but obvious 
as this seems, when stated as a general proposition, it rarely 
serves to check a mistaken presumption. There are many 
writers endowed with a certain susceptibility to the graces 
and refinements of Literature which has been fostered by 
culture till they have mistaken it for native power; and 
these men, being really destitute of native power, are forced 
to imitate what others have created. They can understand 
how a man may have musical sensibility and yet not be a 
good singer ; but they fail to understand, at least in their 
own case, how a man may have literary sensibility, yet not 
be a good story-teller or an effective dramatist. They 
imagine that if they are cultivated and clever, can write 
what is delusively called a " brilliant style," and are famil- 
iar with the masterpieces of Literature, they must be more 
competent to succeed in fiction or the drama than a duller 
man, with a plainer style and slenderer acquaintance with 
the "best models." Had they distinctly conceived the real 
aims of Literature this mistake would often have been 
avoided. A recognition of the aims would have pressed on 
their attention a more distinct appreciation of the require- 
ments. 

10. No one ever doubted that special aptitudes were re- 
quired for music, mathematics, drawing, or for wit; but 
other aptitudes not less special are seldom recognised. It 

l Moliere, ' Le Misanthrope,' Act IV., Sc. i. 



Causes of Success and Failure. 25 

is with, authors as with actors : mere delight in the art 
deludes them into the belief that they could be artists. 
There are born actor s, as there are born authors. To an 
observant eye such men reveal their native endowments. 
Even in conversation they spontaneously throw themselves 
into the characters they speak of. They mimic, often quite 
unconsciously, the speech and gesture of the person. They 
dramatise when they narrate. Other men with little of this 
faculty, but with only so much of it as will enable them to 
imitate the tones and gestures of some admired actor, are 
misled by their vanity into the belief that they also are 
actors, that they also could move an audience as their 
original moves it. 

11. In Literature we see a few original writers, and a 
crowd of imitators : men of special aptitudes, and men who 
mistake their power of repeating with slight variation what 
others have done, for a power of creating anew. The imi- 
tator sees that it is easy to do that which has already been 
done. He intends to improve on it ; to add from his own 
stores something which the originator could not give ; to 
lend it the lustre of a richer mind ; to make this situation 
more impressive, and that character more natural. He is 
vividly impressed with the imperfections of the original. 
And it is a perpetual puzzle to him why the public, which 
applauds his imperfect predecessor, stupidly fails to recog- 
nise his own obvious improvements. 

12. It is from such men that the cry goes forth about 
neglected genius and public caprice. In secret they despise 
many a distinguished writer, and privately, if not publicly, 
assert themselves as immeasurably superior. The success 
of a Dumas is to them a puzzle and an irritation. They do 
not understand that a man becomes distinguished in virtue 
of some special talent properly directed; and that their 
obscurity is due either to the absence of a special talent, or 
to its misdirection. They may probably be superior to 






26 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

Dumas in general culture, or various ability ; it is in par- 
ticular ability that they are his inferiors. They may be 
conscious of wider knowledge, a more exquisite sensibility, 
and a finer taste more finely cultivated ; yet they have 
failed to produce any impression on the public in a direction 
where the despised favourite has produced a strong impres- 
sion. They are thus thrown upon the alternative of sup- 
posing that he has had " the luck " denied to them, or that 
the public taste is degraded and prefers trash. Both opin- 
ions are serious mistakes. Both injure the mind that 
harbours them. 

13. In how far is success a test of merit ? Eigorously 
considered, it is an absolute test. 1 Nor is such a conclusion 
shaken by the undeniable fact that temporary applause is 
often secured by works which have no lasting value. For 
we must always ask, What is the nature of the applause, 
and from what circles does it rise ? A work which appears 
at a particular juncture, and suits the fleeting wants of the 
hour, flattering the passions of the hour, may make a loud 
noise, and bring its author into strong relief. This is not 
luck, but a certain fitness between the author's mind and the 
public needs. He who first seizes the occasion, may be for 
general purposes intrinsically a feebler man than many who 
stand listless or hesitating till the moment be passed ; but 
in Literature, as in Life, a sudden promptitude outrivals 
vacillating power. 

14. Generally speaking, however, this promptitude has 
but rare occasions for achieving success. We may lay it 
down as a rule that no work ever succeeded, even for a day, 
but it deserved that success ; no work ever failed but under 



1 In a certain sense, a piece of Literature may have value even though no 
one ever reads it, but this quality is rather an empty capacity for value than 
value itself. Real value is the actual total effectiveness of the work upon 
the public consciousness past and present. Of this, success, in the sense 
indicated by Lewes, can be the only test. 



Causes of Success and Failure, 27 

conditions which made failure inevitable. This will seem 
hard to men who feel that in their case neglect arises from 
prejudice or stupidity. Yet it is true even in extreme cases ; 
true even when the work once neglected has since been ac- 
knowledged superior to the works which for a time eclipsed 
it. Success, temporary or enduring, is the measure of the 
relation, temporary or enduring, which exists between a 
work and the public mind. The millet seed may be intrin- 
sically less valuable than a pearl ; but the hungry cock 
wisely neglected the pearl, because pearls could not, and 
millet seeds could, appease his hunger. Who shall say how 
much of the subsequent success of a once neglected work is 
due to the preparation of the public mind through the 
works which for a time eclipsed it ? 

15. Let us look candidly at this matter. It interests us 
all ; for we have all more or less to contend against public 
misconception, no less than against our own defects. The 
object of Literature is to instruct, to animate, or to amuse. 
Any book which does one of these things succeeds ; any 
book which does none of these things fails. Failure is the 
indication of an inability to perform what was attempted : 
the aim was misdirected, or the arm was too weak : in either 
case the mark has not been hit. 

16. " The public taste is degraded." Perhaps so ; and 
perhaps not. But in granting a want of due preparation in 
the public, we only grant that the author has missed his 
aim. A reader cannot be expected to be interested in ideas 
which are not presented intelligibly to him, nor delighted 
by art which does not touch him ; and for the writer to 
imply that he furnishes arguments, but does not pretend to 
furnish brains to understand the arguments, is arrogance. 
What Goethe says 1 about the most legible handwriting 
being illegible in the twilight, is doubtless true ; and should 

1 ' Spriiche in Prosa, Kunst,' V., 705. 






28 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

be oftener borne in mind by frivolous objectors, who declare 
they do not understand this or do not admire that, as if 
their want of taste and understanding were rather creditable 
than otherwise, and were decisive proofs of an author's 
insignificance. But this reproof, which is telling against 
individuals, has no justice as against the public. For — 
and this is generally lost sight of — the public is composed 
of the class or classes directly addressed by any work, and 
not of the heterogeneous mass of readers. Mathematicians 
do not write for the circulating library. Science is not 
addressed to poets. Philosophy is meant for students, not 
for idle readers. If the members of a class do not under- 
stand, — if those directly addressed fail to listen, or listen- 
ing, fail to recognise a power in the voice, — surely the 
fault lies with the speaker, who, having attempted to secure 
their attention and enlighten their understandings, has failed 
in the attempt. The mathematician who is without value 
to mathematicians, the thinker who is obscure or meaning- 
less to thinkers, the dramatist who fails to move the pit, 
may be wise, may be eminent, but as an author he has failed. 
He attempted to make his wisdom and his power operate on 
the minds of others. He has missed his mark. Margaritas 
ante porcos I is the soothing maxim of a disappointed self- 
love. But we, who look on, may sometimes doubt whether 
they were pearls thus ineffectually thrown; and always 
doubt the judiciousness of strewing pearls before swine. 

17. The prosperity of a book lies in the minds of read- 
ers. Public knowledge and public taste fluctuate; and 
there come times when works which were once capable of 
instructing and delighting thousands lose their power, and 
works, before neglected, emerge into renown. A small 
minority to whom these works appealed has gradually 
become a large minority, and in the evolution of opinion 
will perhaps become the majority. No man can pretend to 
say that the work neglected to-day will not be a household 



Causes of Success and Failure. 29 

word to-morrow ; or that the pride and glory of our age will 
not be covered with cobwebs on the bookshelves of our 
children. Those works alone can have enduring success 
which successfully appeal to what is permanent in human 
nature — which, while suiting the taste of the day, contain 
truths and beauty deeper than the opinions and tastes of 
the day ; but even temporary success implies a certain tem- 
porary fitness. 1 In Homer, Sophocles, Dante, Shakspeare, 
Cervantes, we are made aware of much that no longer 
accords with the wisdom or the taste of our day — tempo- 
rary and immature expressions of fluctuating opinions — 
but we are also aware of much that is both true and noble 
now, and will be so for ever. 

18. It is only posterity that can decide whether the suc- 
cess or failure shall be enduring; for it is only posterity that 
can reveal whether the relation now existing between the 
work and the public mind is or is not liable to fluctuation. 
Yet no man really writes for posterity ; no man ought to 

" Wer machte denn der Mitwelt Spass? " 

("Who is to amuse the present?") asks the wise Merry 
Andrew in Faust. 2 We must leave posterity to choose its 
own idols. There is, however, this chance in favour of any 
work which has once achieved success, that what has 
pleased one generation may please another, because it may 

1 It not infrequently happens that new ideas for which the public is 
hungry, it knows not why, are embodied in inferior works. Readers find 
in such writings what they seek in vain in more finished productions. The 
enthusiasm with which Wordsworth read the sonnets of so undeniably 
second-rate a mind as that of Bowles, finds its explanation in the fact that 
the latter poet, despite his mediocrity, had embodied in his commonplace 
lines some of the new ideas about nature with which Rousseau had stirred 
the heart of Europe. 

2 Vorspiel auf dem Theater, 1. 77. The force of the quotation is lost 
without the preceding line : — 

" Gesetzt, dass ich von Nachwelt reden wollte, 
Wer machte denn der Mitwelt Spass? " 






30 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

be based upon a truth or beauty which cannot die ; and 
there is this chance against any work which has once 
failed, that its unfitness may be owing to some falsehood 
or imperfection which cannot live. 

iii. Causes of Failure. 

19. In urging all writers to be steadfast in reliance on 
the ultimate victory of excellence, we should no less stren- 
uously urge upon them to beware of the intemperate arro- 
gance which attributes failure to a degraded condition of 
the public mind. The instinct which leads the world to 
worship success is not dangerous. The book which succeeds 
accomplishes its aim. The book which fails may have 
many excellencies, but they must have been misdirected. 
Let us, however, understand what is meant by failure. 
From want of a clear recognition of this meaning, many a 
serious writer has been made bitter by the reflection that 
shallow, feeble works have found large audiences, whereas 
his own work has not paid the printing expenses. He for- 
gets that the readers who found instruction and amusement 
in the shallow books could have found none in his book, 
because he had not the art of making his ideas intelligible 
and attractive to them, or had not duly considered what 
food was assimilable by their minds. It is idle to write in 
hieroglyphics for the mass when only priests can read the 
sacred symbols. 

20. No one, it is hoped, will suppose that by what is 
here said I countenance the notion which is held by some 
authors — a notion implying either arrogant self-sufficiency 
or mercenary servility — that to succeed, a man should 
write down to the public. Quite the reverse. To succeed, 
a man should write up to his ideal. He should do his very 
best ; certain that the very best will still fall short of what 
the public can appreciate. He will only degrade his own 



Causes of Success and Failure. 31 

mind by putting forth, works avowedly of inferior quality ; 
and will find himself greatly surpassed by writers whose 
inferior workmanship has nevertheless the indefinable 
aspect of being the best they can produce. The man of 
common mind is more directly in sympathy with the vulgar 
public, and can speak to it more intelligibly, than any one 
who is condescending to it. If you feel yourself to be 
above the mass, speak so as to raise the mass to the height 
of your argument. It may be that the interval is too great. 
It may be that the nature of your arguments is such as to 
demand from the audience an intellectual preparation, and 
a habit of concentrated continuity of thought, which cannot 
be expected from a miscellaneous assembly. The scholar- 
ship of a Scaliger or the philosophy of a Kant will obvi- 
ously require an audience of scholars and philosophers. 
And in cases where the nature of the work limits the class 
of readers, no man should complain if the readers he does 
not address pass him by to follow another. He will not 
allure these by writing down to them ; or if he allure them, 
he will lose those who properly constitute his real audi- 
ence. 

21. A writer misdirects his talent if he lowers his stand- 
ard of excellence. Whatever he can do best let him do 
that, certain of reward in proportion to his excellence. 
The reward is not always measurable by the number of 
copies sold ; that simply measures the extent of his public. 
It may prove that he has stirred the hearts and enlightened 
the minds of many. It may also prove, as Johnson says, 
"that his nonsense suits their nonsense. " The real reward 
of Literature is in the sympathy of congenial minds, and is 
precious in proportion to the elevation of those minds, and 
the gravity with which such sympathy moves : the admira- 
tion of a mathematician for the 'Mecanique Celeste/ for 
example, is altogether higher in kind than the admiration 
of a novel reader for the last " delightful story." And what 



32 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

should we think of Laplace if he were made bitter by the 
wider popularity of Dumas ? Would he forfeit the admi- 
ration of one philosopher for that of a thousand novel 
readers ? 

22. To ask this question is to answer it ; yet daily ex- 
perience tells us that not only in lowering his standard, but 
in running after a popularity incompatible with the nature 
of his talent, does many a writer forfeit his chance of suc- 
cess. The novel and the drama, by reason of their com- 
manding influence over a large audience, often seduce 
writers to forsake the path on which they could labour with 
some success, but on which they know that only a very 
small audience can be found ; as if it were quantity more 
than quality, noise rather than appreciation, which their 
mistaken desires sought. Unhappily for them, they lose 
the substance, and only snap at the shadow. The audience 
may be large, but it will not listen to them. The novel 
may be more popular and more lucrative, when successful, 
than the history or the essay ; but to make it popular and 
lucrative the writer needs a special talent, and this, as was 
before hinted, seems frequently forgotten by those who take 
to novel writing. 1 Nay, it is often forgotten by the critics ; 
they being, in general, men without the special talent them- 
selves, set no great value on it. They imagine that Inven- 
tion may be replaced by culture, and that clever " writing " 
will do duty for dramatic power. They applaud the " draw- 
ing " of a character, which drawing turns out on inspection 
to be little more than an epigrammatic enumeration of 
particularities, the character thus " drawn " losing all indi- 
viduality as soon as speech and action are called upon. 
Indeed, there are two mistakes very common among re- 
viewers : one is the overvaluation of what is usually con- 
sidered as literary ability ("brilliant writing" it is called; 

1 Lewes is here drawing upon his own experience. See the Introduction. 



Causes of Success and Failure. 33 

" literary tinsel " would be more descriptive) to the preju- 
dice of Invention and Individuality ; the other is the 
overvaluation of what they call " solid acquirements/ 5 
which really mean no more than an acquaintance with the 
classics. As a fact, literary ability and solid acquirements 
are to be had in abundance; invention, humour, and orig- 
inality are excessively rare. It may be a painful reflection 
to those who, having had a great deal of money spent on 
their education, and having given a great deal of time to 
their solid acquirements, now see genius and original power 
of all kinds more esteemed than their learning ; but they 
should reflect that what is learning now is only the diffused 
form of what was once invention. " Solid acquirement " is 
the genius of wits become the wisdom of reviewers. 

iv. The Three Laws of Literature. 

23. Authors are styled an irritable race, and justly, if 
the epithet be understood in its physiological rather than 
its moral sense. This irritability, which responds to the 
slightest stimulus, leads to much of the misdirection of 
talent 'we have been considering. The greatness of an 
author consists in having a mind extremely irritable, and 
at the same time steadfastly imperial : — irritable that no 
stimulus may be inoperative, even in its most evanescent 
solicitations ; imperial, that no solicitation may divert him 
from his deliberately chosen aims. A magisterial subjec- 
tion of all dispersive influences, a concentration of the mind 
upon the thing that has to be done, and a proud renuncia- 
tion of all means of effect which do not spontaneously con- 
nect themselves with it — these are the rare qualities which 
mark out the man of genius. In men of lesser calibre the 
mind is more constantly open to determination from extrin- 
sic influences. Their movement is not self-determined, 
self-sustained. In men of still smaller calibre the mind is 



34 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

entirely determined by extrinsic influences. They are 
prompted to write poems by no musical instinct, but 
simply because great poems have enchanted the world. 
They resolve to write novels upon the vulgarest provoca- 
tions : they see novels bringing money and fame ; they 
think there is no difficulty in the art. The novel will 
afford them an opportunity of bringing in a variety of scat- 
tered details ; scraps of knowledge too scanty for an essay, 
and scraps of experience too meagre for independent pub- 
lication. Others, again, attempt histories, or works of 
popular philosophy and science ; not because they have 
any special stores of knowledge, or because any striking 
novelty of conception urges them to use up old material in 
a new shape, but simply because they have just been read- 
ing with interest some work of history or science, and are 
impatient to impart to others the knowledge they have just 
acquired for themselves. Generally it may be remarked 
that the pride which follows the sudden emancipation of 
the mind from ignorance of any subject, is accompanied by 
a feeling that all the world must be in the state of dark- 
ness from which we have ourselves emerged. It is the 
knowledge learned yesterday which is most freely imparted 
to-day. 

24. We need not insist on the obvious fact of there being 
more irritability than mastery, more imitation than crea- 
tion, more echoes than voices in the world of Literature. 
Good writers are of necessity rare. But the ranks would 
be less crowded with incompetent writers if men of re.al 
ability were not so often misdirected in their aims. My 
object is to define, if possible, the Principles of Success — 
not to supply recipes for absent power, but to expound the 
laws through which power is efficient, and to explain the 
causes which determine success in exact proportion to 
the native power on the one hand, and to the state of pub- 
lic opinion on the other. 



/' 



Causes of Success and Failure. 35 

25. The Laws of Literature may be grouped under three heads. 
Perhaps we might say they are three forms of one principle. 1 They 
are founded on our threefold nature — intellectual, moral, and 
aesthetic. 

The intellectual form is the Principle of Vision. 
The moral form is the Principle of Sincerity. 
The sesthetic form is the Principle of Beauty. 

26. It will be my endeavour to give definite significance, 
in succeeding chapters, to these expressions, which, stand- 
ing unexplained and unillustrated, probably convey very 
little meaning. We shall then see that every work, no mat- 
ter what its subject-matter, necessarily involves these three 
principles in varying degrees ; and that its success is always 
strictly in accordance with its conformity to the guidance 
of these principles. 

27. Unless a writer has what, for the sake of brevity, I 
have called Vision, enabling him to see clearly the facts or 
ideas, the objects or relations, which he places before us for 
our own instruction, his work must obviously be defective. 
He must see clearly if we are to see clearly. Unless a 
writer has Sincerity, urging him to place before us what he 
sees and believes as he sees and believes it, the defective 
earnestness of his presentation will cause an imperfect sym- 
pathy in us. He must believe what he says, or we shall 
not believe it. Insincerity is always weakness; sincerity 
even in error is strength. This is not so obvious a principle 
as the first; at any rate it is one more profoundly disre- 
garded by writers. 

28. Finally, unless the writer has grace — the principle 
of Beauty I have named it — enabling him to give some 
aesthetic charm to his presentation, were it only the charm 
of well-arranged material, and well-constructed sentences, a 
charm sensible through all the intricacies of composition 2 

i See § 29. 2 See §§ 145, 185. 



36 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

and of style, he will not do justice to his powers, and will 
either fail to make his work acceptable, or will very seri- 
ously limit its success. The amount of influence issuing 
from this principle of Beauty will, of course, be greatly 
determined by the more or less aesthetic nature of the 
work. 

29. Books minister to our knowledge, to our guidance, 
and to our delight, by their truth, their uprightness, and 
their art. Truth is the aim of Literature. 1 Sincerity is 
moral truth. Beauty is aesthetic truth. How rigorously 
these three principles determine the success of all works 
whatever, and how rigorously every departure from them, 
no matter how slight, determines proportional failure, with 
the inexorable sequence of a physical law, it will be my 
endeavour to prove in the chapters which are to follow. 

1 " Art has the vocation of revealing the truth in the form of sensuous 
artistic shape." — Hegel, ' Aesthetik,' p, 72; Bosanquet's Trans., p. 105. 






CHAPTER II. 

THE PRINCIPLE OF VISION, 
i. Value of Insight and Personal Experience. 

30. All good Literature rests primarily on insight. All 
bad Literature rests upon imperfect insight, or upon imita- 
tion, which may be defined as seeing at second-hand. 

31. There are men of clear insight who never become 
authors : some, because no sufficient solicitation from inter- 
nal or external impulses makes them bend their energies to 
the task of giving literary expression to their thoughts ; 
and some, because they lack the adequate powers of literary 
expression. But no man, be his felicity and facility of ex- 
pression what they may, ever produces good Literature 
unless he sees for himself, and sees clearly. It is the very 
claim and purpose of Literature to show others what they 
failed to see. Unless a man sees this clearly for himself, 
how can he show it to others ? 

32. Literature delivers tidings of the world within and 
the world without. It tells of the facts which have been 
witnessed, reproduces the emotions which have been felt. 
It places before the reader symbols which represent the 
absent facts, or the relations of these to other facts ; and by 
the vivid presentation of the symbols of emotion kindles the 
emotive sympathy of readers. The art of selecting the fitting 
symbols, and of so arranging them as to be intelligible and 
kindling, distinguishes the great writer from the great 
thinker ; it is an art which also relies on clear insight. 

33. The value of the tidings brought by Literature is 
determined by their authenticity. At all times the air is 

37 



38 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

noisy with rumours, but the real business of life is transacted 
on clear insight and authentic speech. False tidings and 
idle rumours may for an hour clamorously usurp attention, 
because they are believed to be true ; but the cheat is soon 
discovered, and the rumour dies. In like manner Literature 
which is unauthentic may succeed as long as it is believed 
to be true : that is, so long as our intellects have not discov- 
ered the falseness of its pretensions, and our feelings have 
not disowned sympathy with its expressions. These may 
be truisms, but they are constantly disregarded. Writers 
have seldom any steadfast conviction that it is of primary 

1/ necessity for them to deliver tidings about what they them- 
selves have seen and felt. Perhaps their intimate con- 
sciousness assures them that what they have seen or felt is 
neither new nor important. It may not be new, it may not 
be intrinsically important ; nevertheless, if authentic, it has 
its value, and a far greater value than anything reported by 
them at second-hand. We cannot demand from every man 
that he have unusual depth of insight or exceptional expe- 
rience ; but we demand of him that he give us of his best, 
and his best cannot be another's. The facts seen through 
the vision of another, reported on the witness of another, 
may be true, but the reporter cannot vouch for them. Let 
the original observer speak for himself. Otherwise only 
rumours are set afloat. If you have never seen an acid com- 
bine with a base, you cannot instructively speak to me of 
salts ; and this, of course, is true in a more emphatic degree 
with reference to more complex matters. 

34. Personal experience is the basis of all real Literature. 
The writer must have thought the thoughts, seen the objects 
(with bodily or mental vision), and felt the feelings ; other- 
wise he can have no power over us. Importance does not 
depend on rarity so much as on authenticity. The massacre 

sj of a distant tribe, which is heard through the report of 
others, falls far below the heart-shaking effect of a murder 






The Principle of Vision, 39 

committed in our presence. Our sympathy with the un- 
known victim may originally have been as torpid as that 
with the unknown tribe ; but it has been kindled by the 
swift and vivid suggestions of details visible to us as specta- 
tors ; whereas a severe and continuous effort of imagination 
is needed to call up the kindling suggestions of the distant 
massacre. 

35. So little do writers appreciate the importance of 
direct vision and experience, that they are in general silent 
about what they themselves have seen and felt, copious in 
reporting the experience of others. Nay, they are urgently 
prompted to say what they know others think, and what 
consequently they themselves may be expected to think. 
They are as if dismayed at their own individuality, and 
suppress all traces of it in order to catch the general tone. 
Such men may, indeed, be of service in the ordinary com- 
merce of Literature as distributors. All I wish to point 
out is that they are distributors, not producers. The com- 
merce may be served by second-hand reporters, no less 
than by original seers ; but we must understand this service 
to be commercial, and not literary. The common stock of 
knowledge gains from it no addition. The man who detects 
a new fact, a new property in a familiar substance, adds to 
the science of the age; but the man who expounds the 
whole system of the universe on the reports of others, un- 
enlightened by new conceptions of his own, does not add a 
grain to the common store. Great writers may all be known 
by their solicitude about authenticity. A common incident, 
a simple phenomenon, which has been a part of their ex- 
perience, often undergoes what may be called " a trans- 
figuration " in their souls, and issues in the form of Art ; 
while many world-agitating events in which they have not 
been actors, or majestic phenomena of which they were 
never spectators, are by them left to the unhesitating in- 
competence of writers who imagine that fine subjects make 



40 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

fine works. Either the great writer leaves such materials 
untouched, or he employs them as the vehicle of more 
cherished, because more authenticated, tidings, — he paints 
the ruin of an empire as the scenic background for his 
picture of the distress of two simple hearts. 1 The inferior 
writer, because he lays no emphasis on authenticity, cannot 
understand this avoidance of imposing themes. Condemned 
by native incapacity to be a reporter, and not a seer, he 
hopes to shine by the reflected glory of his subjects. It is 
natural in him to mistake ambitious art for high art. He 
does not feel that the best 2 is the highest. 

36. I do not assert that inferior writers abstain from 
the familiar and trivial. On the contrary, as imitators, 
they imitate everything which great writers have shown to 
be sources of interest. But their bias is towards great sub- 
jects. They make no new ventures in the direction of 
personal experience. They are silent on all that they have 
really seen for themselves. Unable to see the deep signifi- 
cance of what is common, they spontaneously turn towards 
the uncommon. 

37. There is, at the present day, a fashion in Literature, 
and in Art generally, which is very deplorable, and which 
may, on a superficial glance, appear at variance with what 
has just been said. The fashion is that of coat-and-waist- 
coat realism, a creeping timidity of invention, moving 
almost exclusively amid scenes of drawing-room existence, 
with all the reticences and pettinesses of drawing-room con- 
ventions. Artists have become photographers, and have 

^turned the camera upon the vulgarities of life, instead of 
representing the more impassioned movements of life. The 
majority of books and pictures are addressed to our lower 
faculties ; they make no effort as they have no power to 
stir our deeper emotions by the contagion of great ideas. 

1 As in Thackeray's ' Vanity Fair.' 

2 That is, " best of its kind," or " the best that the artist can do." 



The Principle of Vision. 41 

Little that makes life noble and solemn is reflected in the 
Art of our day; to amuse a languid audience seems its 
highest aim. Seeing this, some of my readers may ask 
whether the artists have not been faithful to the law I 
have expounded, and chosen to paint the small things they 
have seen, rather than the great things they have not seen ? 
The answer is simple. For the most part the artists have 
not painted what they have seen, but have been false and 
conventional in their pretended realism. And whenever 
they have painted truly, they have painted successfully. 
The authenticity of their work has given it all the value 
which in the nature of things such work could have. 
Titian's portrait of ' The Young Man with a Glove ' is a 
great work of art, though not of great art. It is infinitely 
higher than a portrait of Cromwell, by a painter unable to 
see into the great soul of Cromwell, and to make us see it ; 
but it is infinitely lower than Titian's 'Tribute Money/ 
'Peter the Martyr/ or the '' Assumption.' Tennyson's 
'Northern Farmer' is incomparably greater as a poem than 
Mr. Bailey's ambitious 'Festus'; but the 'Northern Farmer' 
is far below ' Ulysses ' or ' Guinevere,' because moving on a 
lower level, and recording the facts of a lower life. 

38. Insight is the first condition of Art. Yet many a 
man who has never been beyond his village will be silent 
about that which he knows well, and will fancy himself 
called upon to speak of the tropics or the Andes — on the 
reports of others. Never having seen a greater man than 
the parson and the squire — and not having seen into them 
— he selects Cromwell and Plato, Raphael and Napoleon, 
as his models, in the vain belief that these impressive per- 
sonalities will make his work impressive. Of course, I am 
speaking figuratively. By "never having been beyond his 
village," I understand a mental no less than topographical 
limitation. The penetrating sympathy of genius will, even 
from a village, traverse the whole world. What I mean 



42 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

is, that unless by personal experience, no matter through 
what avenues, a man has gained clear insight into the facts 
of life, he cannot successfully place them before us ; and 
whatever insight he has gained, be it of important or of 
unimportant facts, will be of value if truly reproduced. 
No sunset is precisely similar to another, no two souls are 
affected by it in a precisely similar way. Thus may the 
commonest phenomenon have a novelty. To the eye that 
can read aright there is an infinite variety even in the 
most ordinary human being. But to the careless, indis- 
criminating eye all individuality is merged in a misty 
generality. Nature and men yield nothing new to such a 
mind. Of what avail is it for a man to walk out into the 
tremulous mists of morning, to watch the slow sunset, and 
wait for the rising stars, if he can tell us nothing about 
these but what others have already told us — if he feels 
nothing but what others have already felt ? Let a man 
look for himself and tell truly what he sees. We will 
listen to that. We must listen to it, for its very authen- 
ticity has a subtle power of compulsion. What others 
have seen and felt we can learn better from their own lips. 

ii. Psychology of Mental Vision. 

39. I have not yet explained in any formal manner what 
the nature of that insight is which constitutes what I have 
named the Principle of Vision; although doubtless the 
reader has gathered its meaning from the remarks already 
made. For the sake of future applications of the principle 
to the various questions of philosophical criticism which 
must arise in the course of this inquiry, it may be needful 
here to explain (as I have already explained elsewhere) 1 

1 ' History of Philosophy,' Introduction. Cf. also ' Problems of Life and 
Mind,' 1st Series, Problem I., Chap. III., which was written prior to the 
publication of the present treatise. 






The Principle of Vision. 43 

how the chief intellectual operations — Perception, Infer- 
ence, Reasoning, and Imagination — may be viewed as so 
many forms of mental vision. 

40. Perception, as distinguished from Sensation, is the 
presentation before Consciousness of the details which once 
were present in conjunction with the object at this moment 
affecting Sense. These details are inferred to be still in 
conjunction with the object, although not revealed to Sense. 
Thus when an apple is perceived by me, who merely see it, 
all that Sense reports is of a certain coloured surface : the 
roundness, the firmness, the fragrance, and the taste of the 
apple are not present to Sense, but are made present to 
Consciousness by the act of Perception. The eye sees a 
certain coloured surface ; the mind sees at the same instant 
many other co-existent but unapparent facts — it reinstates 
in their due order these unapparent facts. Were it not for 
this mental vision supplying the deficiencies of ocular 
vision, the coloured surface would be an enigma. But the 
suggestion of Sense rapidly recalls the experiences previ- 
ously associated with the object. The apparent facts dis- 
close the facts that are unapparent. 

41. Inference is only a higher form of the same process. 
We look from the window, see the dripping leaves and the 
wet ground, and infer that rain has fallen. It is on infer- 
ences of this kind that all knowledge depends. The exten- 
sion of the known to the unknown, of the apparent to the 
unapparent, gives us Science. Except in the grandeur of 
its sweep, the mind pursues the same course in the interpre- 
tation of geological facts as in the interpretation of the 
ordinary incidents of daily experience. To read the pages 
of the great Stone Book, and to perceive from the wet 
streets that rain has recently fallen, are forms of the same 
intellectual process. In the one case the inference traverses 
immeasurable spaces of time, connecting the apparent facts 
with causes (unapparent facts) similar to those which have 



4-i The Principles of Success in Literature. 

been associated in experience with such results ; in the 
other case the inference connects wet streets and swollen 
gutters with causes which have been associated in experi- 
ence with such results. Let the inference span with its 
mighty arch a myriad of years, or link together the events 
of a few minutes, in each case the arch rises from the 
ground of familiar facts, and reaches an antecedent which 
is known to be a cause capable of producing them. 

42. The mental vision by which in Perception we see the 
unapparent details — i.e., by which sensations formerly co- 
existing with the one now affecting us are reinstated under 
the form of ideas which represent the objects — is a process 
implied in all Ratiocination, which also presents an ideal 
series, such as would be a series of sensations, if the objects 
themselves were before us. A chain of reasoning is a chain 
of inferences : ideal presentations of objects and relations 
not apparent to Sense, or not presentable to Sense. Could 
we realise all the links in this chain, by placing the objects 
in their actual order as a visible series, the reasoning would 
be a succession of perceptions. Thus the path of a planet 
is seen by reason to be an ellipse. It would be perceived 
as a fact, if we were in a proper position and endowed with 
the requisite means of following the planet in its course ; 
but not having this power, we are reduced to infer the unap- 
parent points in its course from the points which are appar- 
ent. We see them mentally. Correct reasoning is the ideal 
assemblage of objects in their actual order of co-existence 
and succession. It is seeing with the mind's eye. False 
reasoning is owing to some misplacement of the order of 
objects, or to the omission of some links in the chain, or 
to the introduction of objects not properly belonging to the 
series. It is distorted or defective vision. The terrified 
traveller sees a highwayman in what is really a sign-post in 
the twilight ; and in the twilight of knowledge, the terrified 
philosopher sees a pestilence foreshadowed by an eclipse. 






The Principle of Vision, 45 

43. Let attention also be called to one great source of 
error, which is also a great source of power, namely, that 
much of our thinking is carried on by signs instead of 
images. We use words as signs of objects ; these suffice to 
carry on the train of inference, when very few images of 
the objects are called up. Let any one attend to his 
thoughts and he will be surprised to find how rare and 
indistinct in general are the images of objects which arise 
before his mind. If he says, " I shall take a cab and get to 
the railway by the shortest cut/' it is ten to one that he 
forms no image of cab or railway, and but a very vague 
image of the streets through which the shortest cut will 
lead. 1 Imaginative minds see images where ordinary minds 
see nothing but signs : this is a source of power ; but it is 
also a source of weakness ; for in the practical affairs of 
life, and in the theoretical investigations of philosophy, a 
too active imagination is apt to distract the attention and 
scatter the energies of the mind. 2 

44. In complex trains of thought signs are indispensable. 
The images, when called up, are only vanishing suggestions : 
they disappear before they are more than half formed. 
And yet it is because signs are thus substituted for images 
(paper transacting the business of money) that we are so 
easily imposed upon by verbal fallacies and meaningless 
phrases. A scientific man of some eminence was once taken 
in by a wag, who gravely asked him whether he had read 
Bunsen's paper on the malleability of light. He confessed 
that he had not read it : " Bunsen sent it to me, but I've 
not had time to look into it." 

45. The degree in which each mind habitually substitutes 

1 Probably suggested by a passage in Burke's ' Essay on the Sublime 
and Beautiful,' Part V., Sect. IV. Cf. Lewes's ' Problems of Life and Mind,' 
3d Series, Problem IV., Chap. V. ; James's ' Psychology,' Vol. I., pp. 253-271. 

2 According to Mr. Galton, " scientific men, as a class, have feeble powers 
of visual representation." — ' Inquiries into Human Faculty,' p. 87. 



46 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

signs for images will be, ceteris paribus, the degree in which 
it is liable to error. This is not contradicted by the fact 
that mathematical, astronomical, and physical reasonings 
may, when complex, be carried on more successfully by the 
employment of signs ; because in these cases the signs 
themselves accurately represent the abstractness of the 
relations. Such sciences deal only with relations, and not 
with objects ; hence greater simplification ensures greater 
accuracy. But no sooner do we quit this sphere of abstrac- 
tions, to enter that of concrete things, than the use of 
symbols becomes a source of weakness. Vigorous and 
effective minds habitually deal with concrete images. This 
is notably the case with poets and great literates. Their 
vision is keener than that of other men. However rapid 
and remote their flight of thought, it is a succession of 
images, not of abstractions. The details which give signifi- 
cance, and which by us are seen vaguely as through a van- 
ishing mist, are by them seen in sharp outlines. The 
image which to us is a mere suggestion, is to them almost 
as vivid as the object. And it is because they see vividly 
that they can paint effectively. 1 

46. Most readers will recognise this to be true of poets, 
but will doubt its application to philosophers, because 
imperfect psychology and unscientific criticism have dis- 
guised the identity of intellectual processes until it has 

1 In the light of recent investigations in psychology, this statement, 
which is true enough in the main, will need some modification. A good 
artist, it has been found, may be possessed of a poor visual imagination. 
" The missing faculty seems to be replaced so serviceably by other modes 
of conception, chiefly, I believe, connected with the incipient motor sense, 
not of the eyeballs only, but of the muscles generally, that men who de- 
clare themselves entirely deficient in the power of seeing mental pictures 
can nevertheless give lifelike descriptions of what they have seen, and can 
otherwise express themselves as if they were gifted with a vivid visual 
imagination. They can also become painters of the rank of Royal Acade- 
micians." — Galton, 'Inquiries into Human Faculty,' p. 88. Cf. James's 
'Psychology,' Chap. XVIII. 



The Principle of Vision. 47 

become a paradox to say that imagination is not less indis- 
pensable to the philosopher than to the poet. The paradox 
falls directly we restate the proposition thus : both poet 
and philosopher draw their power from the energy of their 
mental vision — an energy which disengages the mind from 
the somnolence of habit and from the pressure of obtrusive 
sensations. In general men are passive under Sense and 
the routine of habitual inferences. They are unable to free 
themselves from the importunities of the apparent facts 
and apparent relations which solicit their attention; and 
when they make room for unapparent facts, it is only for 
those which are familiar to their minds. Hence they can 
see little more than what they have been taught to see ; 
they can only think what they have been taught to think. 
For independent vision, and original conception, we must 
go to children and men of genius. The spontaneity of the 
one is the power of the other. Ordinary men live among 
marvels and feel no wonder, grow familiar with objects and 
learn nothing new about them. Then comes an independent 
mind which sees; and it surprises us to find how servile we 
have been to habit and opinion, how blind to what we also 
might have seen, had we used our eyes. The link, so long 
hidden, has now been made visible to us. We hasten to 
make it visible to others. But the flash of light which 
revealed that obscured object does not help us to discover 
others. Darkness still conceals much that we do not even 
suspect. We continue our routine. We always think our 
views correct and complete ; if we thought otherwise they 
would cease to be our views ; and when the man of keener 
insight discloses our error, and reveals relations hitherto 
unsuspected, we learn to see with his eyes, and exclaim : 
" jSTow surely we have got the truth." 



48 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

iii. Vision the Criterion of Genius. 

47. A child is playing with, a piece of paper and brings 
it near the flame of a candle ; another child looks on. Both 
are completely absorbed by the objects, both are ignorant 
or oblivious of the relation between the combustible object 
and the flame : a relation which becomes apparent only 
when the paper is alight. What is called the thoughtless- 
ness of childhood prevents their seeing this unapparent 
fact ; it is a fact which has not been sufficiently impressed 
upon their experience so as to form an indissoluble element 
in their conception of the two in juxtaposition. Whereas 
in the mind of the nurse this relation is so vividly im- 
pressed that no sooner does the paper approach the flame 
than the unapparent fact becomes almost as visible as the 
objects, and a warning is given. She sees what the children 
do not, or cannot see. It has become part of her organised 
experience. 

48. The superiority of one mind over another depends 
on the rapidity with which experiences are thus organised. 
The superiority may be general or special : it may manifest 
itself in a power of assimilating very various experiences, 
so as to have manifold relations familiar to it, or in a power 
of assimilating very special relations, so as to constitute a 
distinctive aptitude for one branch of art or science. The 
experience which is thus organised must of course have 
been originally a direct object of consciousness, either as 
an impressive fact or impressive inference. Unless the 
paper had been seen to burn, no one could know that con- 
tact with flame would consume it. By a vivid remembrance 
the experience of the past is made available to the present, 
so that we do not need actually to burn paper once more, 
— we see the relation mentally. In like manner, Newton 
did not need to go through the demonstrations of many 
complex problems, they flashed upon him as he read the 



The Principle of Vision. 49 

propositions ; they were seen by him in that rapid glance, 
as they would have been made visible through the slower 
process of demonstration. A good chemist does not need 
to test many a proposition by bringing actual gases or acids 
into operation, and seeing the result ; \i& foresees the result : 
his mental vision of the objects and their properties is so 
keen, his experience is so organised, that the result which 
would be visible in an experiment, is visible to him in an 
intuition. A fine poet has no need of the actual presence 
of men and women under the fluctuating impatience of 
emotion, or under the steadfast hopelessness of grief ; he 
needs no setting sun before his window, under it no sullen 
sea. These are all visible, and their fluctuations are visible. 
He sees the quivering lip, the agitated soul ; he hears the 
aching cry, and the dreary wash of waves upon the beach. 

49. The writer who pretends to instruct us should first 
assure himself that he has clearer vision of the things he 
speaks of, — knows them and their qualities, if not better 
than we, at least with some distinctive knowledge. Other- 
wise he should announce himself as a mere echo, a middle- 
man, a distributor. Our need is for more light. This can 
be given only by an independent seer who 

" Lends a precious seeing to the eye." * 

50. All great authors are seers. " Perhaps if we should ^ 
meet Shakspeare," says Emerson, " we should not be con- 
scious of any steep inferiority ; no : but of great equality ; 
— only that he possessed a strange skill of using, of classi- 
fying, his facts, which we lacked. For, notwithstanding 
our utter incapacity to produce anything like ' Hamlet ; or 

' Othello/ we see the perfect reception this wit and immense 
knowledge of life and liquid eloquence find in us all." 2 
This aggrandisement of our common stature rests on ques- 

1 " It adds a precious seeing to the eye." — ' Love's Labor Lost,' IV., iii. 

2 Essay on"' Intellect,' 



50 The Principles of Success in Literature, 

tionable ground. If our capacity of being moved by Shak- 
speare discloses a community, our incapacity of producing 
6 Hamlet ? no less discloses our inferiority. It is certain 
that could we meet Shakspeare we should find him strik- 
ingly like ourselves — with the same faculties, the same 
sensibilities, though not in the same degree. The secret 
of his power over us lies, of course, in our having the 
capacity to appreciate him. Yet we seeing him in the 
unimpassioned moods of daily life, it is more than probable 
that we should see nothing in him but what was ordinary ; 
nay, in some qualities he would seem inferior. Heroes 
require a perspective. They are men who look superhuman 
only when elevated on the pedestals of their achievements. 
In ordinary life they look like ordinary men ; not that they 
are of the common mould, but seem so because their un- 
common qualities are not then called forth. Superiority 
requires an occasion. The common man is helpless in an 
emergency : assailed by contradictory suggestions, or con- 
fused by his incapacity, he cannot see his way. The hour 
of emergency finds a hero calm and strong, and strong 
because calm and clear-sighted ; he sees what can be done, 
and does it. This is often a thing of great simplicity, so 
that we marvel others did not see it. Now it has been 
done, and proved successful, many underrate its value, 
thinking that they also would have done precisely the same 
thing. The world is more just. It refuses to men unas- 
sailed by the difficulties of a situation the glory they have 
not earned. The world knows how easy most things appear 
when they have once been done. We can all make the egg 
stand on end after Columbus. 

51. Shakspeare, then, would probably not impress us 
with a sense of our inferiority if we were to meet him to- 
morrow. Most likely we should be bitterly disappointed ; 
because, having formed our conception of him as the man 
who wrote ' Hamlet ' and ' Othello/ we forget that these 



The Principle of Vision. 51 

were not the products of his ordinary moods, but the mani- 
festations of his power at white heat. In ordinary moods he 
must be very much as ordinary men, and it is in these we 
meet him. How notorious is the astonishment of friends and 
.associates when any man's achievements suddenly emerge 
into renown. " They could never have believed it." Why 
should they ? Knowing him only as one of their circle, 
and not being gifted with the penetration which discerns 
a latent energy, but only with the vision which discerns 
apparent results, they are taken by surprise. 1 Nay, so 
biassed are we by superficial judgments, that we frequently 
ignore the palpable fact of achieved excellence simply be- 
cause we cannot reconcile it with our judgment of the man 
who achieved it. The deed has been done, the work written, 
the picture painted ; it is before the world, and the world is 
ringing with applause. There is no doubt whatever that 
the man whose name is in every mouth did the work; but 
because our personal impressions of him do not correspond 
with our conceptions of a powerful man, we abate or with- 
draw our admiration, and attribute his success to lucky acci- 
dent. This blear-eyed, taciturn, timid man, whose knowledge 
of many things is manifestly imperfect, whose inaptitude 
for many things is apparent, can he be the creator of such 
glorious works ? Can he be the large and patient thinker, 
the delicate humourist, the impassioned poet ? Nature seems 
to have answered this question for us ; yet so little are we 
inclined to accept Nature's emphatic testimony on this 
point, that few of us ever see without disappointment the 
man whose works have revealed his greatness. 2 

1 "No man, the saying goes, is a hero to his valet. But that is only 
because it takes a hero to recognize a hero. The valet will have no diffi- 
culty in appreciating his like." — Goethe, ' Spriiche in Prosa,' V. (Sug- 
gested to Goethe by Hegel.) 

2 Cf . Bulwer-Lytton's entertaining essay in 'The Student': 'On the 
Difference between Authors and the Impression conveyed of them by 
their Works/ 



52 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

52. It stands to reason that we should not rightly appre- 
ciate Shakspeare if we were to meet him, simply because 
we should meet him as an ordinary man, and not as the 
author of 'Hamlet.' Yet if we had a keen insight we 
should detect even in his quiet talk the marks of an origi- 
nal mind. We could not, of course, divine, without evi- 
dence, how deep and clear his insight, how mighty his 
power over grand representative symbols, how prodigal his 
genius : these only could appear on adequate occasions. 
But we should notice that he had an independent way of 
looking at things. He would constantly bring before us 
some latent fact, some unsuspected relation, some resem- 
blance between dissimilar things. We should feel that his 
utterances were not echoes. If therefore, in these moments 
of equable serenity, his mind glancing over trivial things 
saw them with great clearness, we might infer that in 
moments of intense activity his mind gazing steadfastly on 
important things, would see wonderful visions, where to us 
all was vague and shifting. During our quiet walk with 
him across the fields he said little, or little that was mem- 
orable ; but his eye was taking in the varying forms and 
relations of objects, and slowly feeding his mind with 
images. The common hedge-row, the gurgling brook, the 
waving corn, the shifting cloud-architecture, and the slop- 
ing uplands, have been seen by us a thousand times, but 
they show us nothing new ; they have been seen by him a 
thousand times, and each time with fresh interest, and fresh 
discovery. If he describes that walk he will surprise us 
with revelations : we can then and thereafter . see all that 
he points out ; but we needed his vision to direct our own. 
And it is one of the incalculable influences of poetry that 
each new revelation is an education of the eye and the feel- 
ings. We learn to see and feel Nature in a far clearer and 
profounder way, now that we have been taught to look by 
poets. The incurious, unimpassioned gaze of the Alpine 



The Principle of Vision. 53 

peasant on the scenes which mysteriously and profoundly 
affect the cultivated tourist, is the gaze of one who has never 
been taught to look. The greater sensibility of educated 
Europeans to influences which left even the poetic Greeks 
unmoved, is due to the directing vision of successive poets. 1 
53. The great difficulty which besets us all — Shakspeares 
and others, but Shakspeares less than others — is the diffi- 
culty of disengaging the mind from the thraldom of sensa- 
tion and habit, and escaping from the pressure of objects 
immediately present, or of ideas which naturally emerge, 
linked together as they are by old associations. We have 
to see anew, to think anew. It requires great vigour to 
escape from the old and spontaneously recurrent trains of 
thought. And as this vigour is native, not acquired, my 
readers may, perhaps, urge the futility of expounding with 
so much pains a principle of success in Literature which, 
however indispensable, must be useless as a guide ; they 
may object that although good Literature rests on insight, 
there is nothing to be gained by saying " unless a man have 
the requisite insight he will not succeed." But there is 
something to be gained. In the first place, this is an ana- 
lytical inquiry into the conditions of success : it aims at 
discriminating the leading principles which inevitably deter- 
mine success. In the second place, supposing our analysis 
of the conditions to be correct, practical guidance must fol- 
low. We cannot, it is true, gain clearness of vision simply 
by recognising its necessity ; but by recognising its neces- 
sity we are taught to seek for it as a primary condition of 

1 The influence of poets and other artists in creating a sense for the 
appreciation of natural beauty can hardly be overestimated. "The ap- 
preciation of natural beauty by the public mind is in fact conditioned by 
and historically sequent upon the revelations made by great painters and 
poets ; though no doubt the tendencies of these men are themselves con- 
trolled by deep-seated influences in the state of culture and society." — 
B. Bosanquet, ' The Part played by ^Esthetic in the Development of Modern 
Philosophy.' 



54 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

success ; we are forced to come to an understanding with 
ourselves as to whether we have or have not a distinct 
vision of the thing we speak of, whether we are seers or 
reporters, whether the ideas and feelings have been thought 
and felt by us as part and parcel of our own individual 
experience, or have been echoed by us from the books and 
conversation of others ? We can always ask, are we paint- 
ing farm-houses or fairies because these are genuine visions 
of our own, or only because farm-houses and fairies have 
been successfully painted by others, and are poetic material ? 

54. The man who first saw an acid redden a vegetable- 
blue, had something to communicate ; and the man who first 
saw (mentally) that all acids redden vegetable-blues, had 
something to communicate. But no man can do this again. 
In the course of his teaching he may have frequently to 
report the fact ; but this repetition is not of much value 
unless it can be made to disclose some new relation. And 
so of other and more complex cases. Every sincere man 
can determine for himself whether he has any authentic 
tidings to communicate ; and although no man can hope to 
discover much that is actually new, he ought to assure him- 
self that even what is old in his work has been authenti- 
cated by his own experience. He should not even speak of 
acids reddening vegetable-blues upon mere hearsay, unless 
he is speaking figuratively. All his facts should have been 
verified by himself, all his ideas should have been thought 
by himself. In proportion to the fulfilment of this condi- 
tion will be his success ; in proportion to its non-fulfilment, 
his failure. 

55. Literature in its vast extent includes writers of three 
different classes, and in speaking of success we must always 
be understood to mean the acceptance each writer gains in 
his own class ; otherwise a flashy novelist might seem more 
successful than a profound poet; a clever compiler more 
successful than an original discoverer. 



The Principle of Vision. 55 

56. The Primary Class is composed of the born seers — 
men who see for themselves and who originate. These are 
poets, philosophers, discoverers. The Secondary Class is 
composed of men less puissant in faculty, but genuine also 
in their way, who travel along the paths opened by the great 
originators, and also point out many a side-path and shorter 
cut. They reproduce and vary the materials furnished by 
others, but they do this, not as echoes only, they authenti- 
cate their tidings, they take care to see what the discoverers 
have taught them to see, and in consequence of this clear 
vision they are enabled to arrange and modify the materials 
so as to produce new results. The Primary Class is com- 
posed of men of genius, 1 the Secondary Class of men of 
talent. It not ^infrequently happens, especially in philoso- 
phy and science, that the man of talent may confer a lustre 
on the original invention ; he takes it up a nugget and lays 
it down a coin. Finally, there is the largest class of all, 
comprising the Imitators in Art, and the Compilers in Phi- 
losophy. These bring nothing to the general stock. They 
are sometimes (not often) useful ; but it is as cornfactors, 
not as corn-growers. They sometimes do good service by 
distributing knowledge where otherwise it might never 
penetrate ; but in general their work is more hurtful than 
beneficial : hurtful, because it is essentially bad work, being 
insincere work, and because it stands in the way of better 
work. 

57. Even among Imitators and Compilers there are 
almost infinite degrees of merit and demerit : echoes of 
echoes reverberating echoes in endless succession ; compila- 
tions of all degrees of worth and worthlessness. But, as 
will be shown hereafter, even in this lower sphere the worth 
of the work is strictly proportional to the Vision, Sincerity, 
and Beauty; so that an imitator whose eye is keen for the 

iCf. James's ■ Psychology, ' Vol. L, pp. 423-424, 529-530; Vol. II., pp. 
360-362. 



56 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

forms he imitates, whose speech is honest, and whose talent 
has grace, will by these very virtues rise almost to the 
Secondary Class, and will secure an honourable success. 

58. I have as yet said but little, and that incidentally, of 
the part played by the Principle of Vision in Art. Many 
readers who will admit the principle in Science and Phi- 
losophy, may hesitate in extending it to Art, which, as they 
conceive, draws its inspirations from the Imagination. 
Properly understood there is no discrepancy between the 
two opinions ; and in the next chapter I shall endeavour to 
show how Imagination is only another form of this very 
Principle of Vision which we have been considering. 



CHAPTER III. 

OF VISION IN AKT. 
i. Imagination. 

59. There are many who will admit, without hesitation, 
that in Philosophy what I have called the Principle of 
Vision holds an important rank, because the mind must 
necessarily err in its speculations unless it clearly sees facts 
and relations ; but there are some who will hesitate before 
admitting the principle to a similar rank in Art, because, 
as they conceive, Art is independent of the truth of facts, 
and is swayed by the autocratic power of Imagination. 

60. It is on this power that our attention should first be 
arrested; the more so because it is usually spoken of in 
vague rhapsodical language, with intimations of its being 
something peculiarly mysterious. There are few words 
more abused. The artist is called a creator, which in one 
sense he is ; and his creations are said to be produced by u ' 
processes wholly unallied to the creations of Philosophy, 
which they are not. Hence it is a paradox to speak of the 

' Principia ? as a creation demanding severe and continuous 
exercise of the imagination ; but it is only a paradox to 
those who have never analysed the processes of artistic and 
philosophic creation. 

61. I am far from desiring to innovate in language, or to 
raise interminable discussions respecting the terms in gen- 
eral use. Nevertheless we have here to deal with questions 
that lie deeper than mere names. We have to examine 
processes, and trace, if possible, the methods of intellectual 
activity pursued in all branches of Literature ; and we must 

57 



58 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

not suffer our course to be obstructed by any confusion in 
terms that can be cleared up. We may respect the demar- 
cations established by usage, but we must ascertain, if pos- 
sible, the fundamental affinities. There is, for instance, a 
broad distinction between Science and Art, which, so far 
from requiring to be effaced, requires to be emphasised : it 
is that in Science the paramount appeal is to the Intellect 
— its purpose being instruction; in Art, the paramount 
appeal is to the Emotions — its purpose being pleasure. 
A work of Art must of course indirectly appeal to the In- 
tellect, and a work of Science will also indirectly appeal to 
the Feelings ; nevertheless a poem on the stars and a trea- 
tise on astronomy have distinct aims and distinct methods. 
But having recognised the broadly-marked differences, we 
are called upon to ascertain the underlying resemblances. 
Logic and Imagination belong equally to both. It is only 
because men have been attracted by the differences that 
they have overlooked the not less important affinities. 
Imagination is an intellectual process common to Philos- 
ophy and Art ; l but in each it is allied with different pro- 
cesses, and directed to different ends ; and hence, although 
the 'Principia' demanded an imagination of not less vivid 
and sustained power than was demanded by ( Othello,' it 
would be very false psychology to infer that the mind of 
Newton was competent to the creation of ' Othello/ or the 
mind of Shakspeare capable of producing the 'Principia.' 
They were specifically different minds ; their works were 
specifically different. But in both the imagination was 
intensely active. Newton had a mind predominantly 
ratiocinative : its movement was spontaneously towards the 
abstract relations of things. Shakspeare had a mind pre- 

1 Cf. Lewes's ' Problems of Life and Mind,' 1st Series, Prob. I., Chap. V. ; 
Tyndall's ' Scientific Use of the Imagination ' (in 'Fragments of Science') ; 
Everett's ' Poetry, Comedy, and Duty,' pp. 5-19; Baldwin's ' Handbook of 
Psychology,' pp. 235-238; Dewey's 'Psychology,' Chap. VII. 



Of Vision in Art. 59 

dominantly emotive, the intellect always moving in alliance 
with the feelings, and spontaneously fastening upon the 
concrete facts in preference to their abstract relations. 
Their mental Vision was turned towards images of different 
orders, and it moved in alliance with different faculties ; 
but this Vision was the cardinal quality of both. Dr. 
Johnson was guilty of a surprising fallacy in saying that 
a great mathematician might also be a great poet : " Sir, a 
man can walk east as far as he can walk west." 1 True, but 
mathematics and poetry do not differ as east and west ; and 
he would hardly assert that a man who could walk twenty 
miles could therefore swim that distance. 

62. The real state of the case is somewhat obscured by 
our observing that many men of science, and some even 
eminent as teachers and reporters, display but slender 
claims to any unusual vigour of imagination. It must be 
owned that they are often slightly dull ; and in matters of 
Art are not unfrequently blockheads. Nay, they would 
themselves repel it as a slight if the epithet " imaginative 7? 
were applied to them; it would seem to impugn their 
gravity, to cast doubts upon their accuracy. But such men 
are the cisterns, not the fountains, of Science. They rely 
upon the knowledge already organised ; they do not bring 
accessions to the common stock. They are not investi- 
gators, but imitators ; they are not discoverers — inventors. 
No man ever made a discovery (he may have stumbled on 
one) without the exercise of as much imagination as, em- 

1 " Robertson said, one man had more judgment, another more imagina- 
tion. Johnson : ' No, sir ; it is only, one man has more mind than an- 
other. He may direct it differently; he may, by accident, see the success 
of one kind of study, and take a desire to excel in it. I am persuaded that, 
had Sir Isaac Newton applied to poetry, he would have made a very fine 
epick poem. . . . Sir, the man who has vigour may walk to the east, just as 
well as to the west, if he happens to turn his head that way.' " — ' Journal of 
a Tour to the Hebrides,' Aug. 15. Cf. Boswell's 'Johnson,' Hill's ed., II., 
436-437, and note. 



60 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

ployed in another direction and in alliance with other 
faculties, would have gone to the creation of a poem. 
Every one who has seriously investigated a novel question, 
who has really interrogated Nature with a view to a dis- 
tinct answer, will bear me out in saying that it requires 
intense and sustained effort of imagination. The relations 
of sequence among the phenomena must be seen ; they are 
hidden ; they can only be seen mentally ; a thousand sug- 
gestions rise before the mind, but they are recognised as 
old suggestions, or as inadequate to reveal what is sought ; 
the experiments by which the problem may be solved have 
to be imagined; and to imagine a good experiment is as 
difficult as to invent a good fable, for we must have dis- 
tinctly present — in clear mental vision — the known quali- 
ties and relations of all the objects, and must see what will 
be the effect of introducing some new qualifying agent. If 
any one thinks this is easy, let him try it : the trial will 
teach him a lesson respecting the methods of intellectual 
activity not without its use. Easy enough, indeed, is the 
ordinary practice of experiment, which is either a mere 
repetition or variation of experiments already devised (as 
ordinary story-tellers re-tell the stories of others), or else a 
haphazard, blundering way of bringing phenomena together, 
to see what will happen. To invent is another process. 
The discoverer and the poet are inventors ; and they are 
J so because their mental vision detects the unapparent, 
unsuspected facts, almost as vividly as ocular vision rests 
on the apparent and familiar. 

63. It is the special aim of Philosophy to discover and 
systematise the abstract relations of things ; and for this 
purpose it is forced to allow the things themselves to drop 
out of sight, fixing attention solely on the quality imme- 
diately investigated, to the neglect of all other qualities. 
Thus the philosopher, 1 having to appreciate the mass, 

1 That is, the natural philosopher, or scientist. Cf. Lewes's ' History of 
Philosophy,' Introduction. 



Of Vision in Art. 61 

density, refracting power, or chemical constitution of some 
object, finds he can best appreciate this by isolating it from 
every other detail. He abstracts this one quality from the 
complex bundle of qualities which constitute the object, 
and he makes this one stand for the whole. This is a 
necessary simplification. If all the qualities were equally 
present to his mind, his vision would be perplexed by their 
multiple suggestions. He may follow out the relations of 
each in turn, but he cannot follow them out together. 

64. The aim of the poet is very different. He wishes to 
kindle the emotions by the suggestion of objects them- 
selves ; and for this purpose he must present images of the 
objects rather than of any single quality. It is true that 
he also must exercise a power of abstraction and selection. 
He cannot without confusion present all the details. And 
it is here that the fine selective instinct of the true artist 
shows itself, in knowing what details to present and what 
to omit. Observe this : the abstraction of the philosopher 
is meant to keep the object itself, with its perturbing sug- 
gestions, out of sight, allowing only one quality to fill the 
field of vision ; whereas the abstraction of the poet is meant 
to bring the object itself into more vivid relief, to make it 
visible by means of the selected qualities. In other words, 
the one aims at abstract symbols, the other at picturesque 
effects. The one can carry on his deductions by the aid of 
colourless signs, x or y. The other appeals to the emotions 
through the symbols which will most vividly express the 
real objects in their relations to our sensibilities. 

65. Imagination is obviously active in both. From 
known facts the philosopher infers the facts that are un- 
apparent. He does so by an effort of imagination (hypoth- 
esis) which has to be subjected to verification : he makes a 
mental picture of the unapparent fact, and then sets about 
to prove that his picture does in some way correspond with 
the reality. The correctness of his hypothesis and veri- 



62 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

fication must depend on the clearness of his vision. Were 
all the qualities of things apparent to Sense, there would 
be no longer any mystery. A glance would be Science. 
But only some of the facts are visible ; and it is because we 
see little, that we have to imagine much. We see a feather 
rising in the air, and a quill, from the same bird, sinking to 
the ground : these contradictory reports of sense lead the 
mind astray ; or perhaps excite a desire to know the reason. 
We cannot see, — we must imagine, — the unapparent facts. 
Many mental pictures may be formed, but to form the one 
which corresponds with the reality requires great sagacity 
and a very clear vision of known facts. In trying to form 
this mental picture, we remember that when the air is 
removed the feather falls as rapidly as the quill, and thus 
we see that the air is the cause of the feather's rising ; we 
mentally see the air pushing under the feather, and see it 
almost as plainly as if the air were a visible mass thrusting 
the feather upwards. 

66. From a mistaken appreciation of the real process, 
this would by few be called an effort of Imagination. On 
the contrary, some "wild hypothesis" would be lauded as 
imaginative in proportion as it departed from all suggestion 
of experience, i.e., real mental vision. To have imagined 
that the feather rose owing to its " specific lightness/' and 
that the quill fell owing to its " heaviness," would to many 
appear a more decided effort of the imaginative faculty. 
Whereas it is no effort of that faculty at all ; it is simply 
naming differently the facts it pretends to explain. To 
imagine — to form an image — we must have the numerous 
relations of things present to the mind, and see the objects 
in their actual order. In this we are of course greatly aided 
by the mass of organised experience, which allows us rap- 
idly to estimate the relations of gravity or affinity just as 
we remember that fire burns and that heated bodies expand. 
But be the aid great or small, and the result victorious or 
disastrous, the imaginative process is always the same. 



Of Vision in Art. 63 

67. There is a slighter strain on the imagination of the 
poet, because of his greater freedom. He is not, like the 
philosopher, limited to the things which are, or were. His 
vision includes things which might be, and things which 
never were. The philosopher is not entitled to assume that 
Nature sympathises with man ; he must prove the fact to 
be so if he intend making any use of it ; — we admit no 
deductions from unproved assumptions. But the poet is at 
perfect liberty to assume this ; and having done so, he paints 
what would be the manifestations of this sympathy. The 
naturalist who should describe a hippogriff would incur the 
laughing scorn of Europe ; but the poet feigns its existence, 
and all Europe is delighted when it rises with Astolfo in 
the air. We never pause to ask the poet whether such an 
animal exists. He has seen it, and we see it with his eyes. 
Talking trees do not startle us in Virgil and Tennyson. 
Puck and Titania, Hamlet and EalstafT, are as true for us 
as Luther and Napoleon, so long as we are in the realm of 
Art. We grant the poet a free privilege because he will 
use it only for our pleasure. In Science pleasure is not an 
object, and we give no licence. 

68. Philosophy and Art both render the invisible visible */ 
by imagination. Where Sense observes two isolated objects, 
Imagination discloses two related objects. This relation is 
the nexus visible. We had not seen it before ; it is appar- 
ent now. Where we should only see a calamity the poet 
makes us see a tragedy. Where we could only see a sun- 
rise he enables us to see 

" Day like a mighty river flowing in." 

69. Imagination is not the exclusive appanage of artists, 
but belongs in varying degrees to all men. It is simply the 
power of forming images. Supplying the energy of Sense 
where Sense cannot reach, it brings into distinctness the 
facts, obscure or occult, which are grouped round an object 



64 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

or an idea, but which are not actually present to Sense. 
Thus, at the aspect of a windmill, the mind forms images 
of many characteristic facts relating to it ; and the kind of 
images will depend very much on the general disposition, 
or particular mood, of the mind affected by the object : the 
painter, the poet, and the moralist will have different images 
suggested by the presence of the windmill or its symbol. 
There are indeed sluggish minds so incapable of self-evolved 
activity, and so dependent on the immediate suggestions of 
Sense, as to be almost destitute of the power of forming dis- 
tinct images beyond the immediate circle of sensuous asso- 
ciations ; and these are rightly named unimaginative minds ; 
but in all minds of energetic activity, groups and clusters of 
images, many of them representing remote relations, spon- 
taneously present themselves in conjunction with objects 
or their symbols. It should, however, be borne in mind 
that Imagination can only recall what Sense has previously 
impressed. No man imagines any detail of which he has 
not previously had direct or indirect experience. Objects as 
fictitious as mermaids and hippogriffs are made up from the 
gatherings of Sense. 

70. "Made up from the gatherings of Sense " is a phrase 
which may seem to imply some peculiar plastic power such 
as is claimed exclusively for artists : a power not of simple 
recollection, but of recollection and recombination. Yet 
this power belongs also to philosophers. To combine the 
half of a woman with the half of a fish, — to imagine the 
union as an existing organism, — is not really a different 
process from that of combining the experience of a chemical 
action with an electric action, and seeing that the two are 
one existing fact. When the poet hears the storm-cloud 
muttering, and sees the moonlight sleeping on the bank, he 
transfers his experience of human phenomena to the cloud 
and the moonlight : he personifies, draws Nature within the 
circle of emotion, and is called a poet. When the philoso- 



Of Vision in Art. 65 

pher sees electricity in the storm-cloud, and sees the sunlight 
stimulating vegetable growth, he transfers his experience of 
physical phenomena to these objects, and draws within the 
circle of Law phenomena which hitherto have been unclassi- 
fied. Obviously the imagination has been as active in the 
one case as in the other ; the differentia lying in the purposes 
of the two, and in the general constitution of the two minds. 

71. It has been noted that there is less strain on the 
imagination of the poet ; but even his greater freedom is 
not altogether disengaged from the necessity of verification ; ^/ 
his images must have at least subjective truth ; if they do 
not accurately correspond with objective realities, they 
must correspond with our sense of congruity. No poet is 
allowed the licence of creating images inconsistent with our 
conceptions. If he said the moonlight burnt the bank, we 
should reject the image as untrue, inconsistent with our 
conceptions of moonlight ; whereas the gentle repose of the 
moonlight on the bank readily associates itself with images 

of sleep. 1 

72. The often mooted question, What is Imagination? 
thus receives a very clear and definite answer. It is the j- 
power of forming images ; it reinstates, in a visible group, y 
those objects which are invisible, either from absence or * 
from imperfection of our senses. That is its generic char- 
acter. Its specific character, which marks it off from Mem- 
ory, and which is derived from the powers of selection and 
recombination, will be expounded further on. Here I only 
touch upon its chief characteristic, in order to disengage 
the term from that mysteriousness which writers have 
usually assigned to it, thereby rendering philosophic criti- 
cism impossible. Thus disengaged it may be used with 
more certainty in an attempt to estimate the imaginative 
power of various works. 

1 Cf. Goethe's dialogue, ' Ueber Wahrheit und Wahrscheinlichkeit der 
Kunstwerke,' Hempl ed., Bd. 28, p. 97. 



66 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

73. Hitherto the amount .of that power has been too f re- 
,/ quently estimated according to the extent of departure from 

ordinary experience in the images selected. Nineteen out 
of twenty would unhesitatingly declare that a hippogriff 
was a greater effort of imagination than a well-conceived 
human character ; a Peri than a woman ; Puck or Titania 
than Falstaff or Imogen. A description of Paradise ex- 
tremely unlike any known garden must, it is thought, neces- 
sarily be more imaginative than the description of a quiet 
rural nook. It may be more imaginative ; it may be less 
so. All depends upon the mind of the poet. To suppose 
that it must, because of its departure from ordinary experi- 
ence, is a serious error. The muscular effort required to 
draw a cheque for a thousand pounds might as reasonably 
be thought greater than that required for a cheque of five 
pounds ; and much as the one cheque seems to surpass the 
other in value, the result of presenting both to the bankers 
may show that the more modest cheque is worth its full 
five pounds, whereas the other is only so much waste paper. 
The description of Paradise may be a glittering farrago; 
the description of the landscape may be full of sweet rural 
images : the one having a glare of gaslight and Vauxhall 
splendour ; the other having the scent of new-mown hay. 

74. A work is imaginative in virtue of the power of its 
^images over our emotions ; not in virtue of any rarity or 

surprisingness in the images themselves. A Madonna and 
Child by Era Angelico is more powerful over our emotions 
than a Crucifixion by a vulgar artist; a beggar-boy by 
Murillo is more imaginative than an Assumption by the same 
painter ; but the Assumption by Titian displays far greater 
imagination than either. We must guard against the 
natural tendency to attribute to the artist what is entirely 
due to accidental conditions. A tropical scene, luxuriant 
with tangled overgrowth and impressive in the grandeur 
of its phenomena, may more decisively arrest our attention 



Of Vision in Art. 67 

than an English landscape with its green cornlands and 
plenteous homesteads. But this superiority of interest is 
no proof of the artist's superior imagination ; and by a 
spectator familiar with the tropics, greater interest may be 
felt in the English landscape, because its images may more 
forcibly arrest his attention by their novelty. And were 
this not so, were the inalienable impressiveness of tropical 
scenery always to give the poet who described it a superi- 
ority in effect, this would not prove the superiority of his 
imagination. For either he has been familiar with such 
scenes, and imagines them just as the other poet imagines 
his English landscape — by an effort of mental vision, call- 
ing up the absent objects ; or he has merely read the 
descriptions of others, and from these makes up his picture. 
It is the same with his rival, who also recalls and recom- 
bines. Foolish critics often betray their ignorance by say- 
ing that a painter or a writer "only copies what he has 
seen, or puts down what he has known." They forget that 
no man imagines what he has not seen or known, and that 
it is in the selection of the characteristic details 1 that the 
artistic power is manifested. Those who suppose that 
familiarity with scenes or characters enables a painter or a 
novelist to " copy " them with artistic effect, forget the 
well-known fact that the vast majority of men are painfully 
incompetent to avail themselves of this familiarity, and 
cannot form vivid pictures even to themselves of scenes in 
which they pass their daily lives ; and if they could imagine 
these, they would need the delicate selective instinct to 
guide them in the admission and omission of details, as 
well as in the grouping of the images. Let any one try to 
"copy" the wife or brother he knows so well, — to make a 
human image which shall speak and act so as to impress 
strangers with a belief in its truth, — and he will then see 

1 Cf. Taine, ' Philosophie de l'Art,' L, Sect. V. 



68 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

that the much-despised reliance on actual experience is not 
the mechanical procedure it s believed to be. When Scott 
drew Saladin and Coeur de Lion he did not really display 
more imaginative power than when he drew the Muckle- 
backits, although the majority of readers would suppose 
that the one demanded a great effort of imagination, 
whereas the other formed part of his familiar experiences 
of Scottish life. The mistake here lies in confounding the 
sources from which the materials were derived with the 
plastic power of forming these materials into images. 
More conscious effort may have been devoted to the collec- 
tion of the materials in the one case than in the other, but 
that this has nothing to do with the imaginative power 
employed may readily be proved by an analysis of the 
intellectual processes of composition. Scott had often 
been in fishermen's cottages and heard them talk; from 
the registered experience of a thousand details relating to 
the life of the poor, their feelings and their thoughts, he 
gained that material upon which his imagination could 
work ; in the case of Saladin and Coeur de Lion he had to 
gain these principally through books and his general ex- 
perience of life ; and the images he formed — the vision he 
had of Mucklebackit and Saladin — must be set down to 
his artistic faculty, not to his experience or erudition. 

75. It has been well said by a very imaginative writer, 1 
that " when a poet floats in the empyrean, and only takes 
a bird's-eye view of the earth, some people accept the mere 
fact of his soaring for sublimity, and mistake his dim vision 
of earth for proximity to heaven." And in like manner, 
when a thinker frees himself from all the trammels of fact, 
and propounds a "bold hypothesis/' people mistake the 
vagabond erratic flights of guessing for a higher range of 
philosophic power. In truth, the imagination is most 

1 George Eliot, in Westminster Revieiv, Vol. 67, ' Worldliness and Other- 
Worldliness: The Poet Young.' 



Of Vision in Art. 69 

tasked when it has to paint pictures which shall withstand 
the silent criticism of general experience, and to frame 
hypotheses which shall withstand the confrontation with 
facts. I cannot here enter into the interesting question of 
Realism and Idealism in Art, which must be debated in a 
future chapter ; but I wish to call special attention to the 
psychological fact, that fairies and demons, remote as they 
are from experience, are not created by a more vigorous 
effort of imagination than milkmaids and poachers. The 
intensity of vision in the artist and of vividness in his 
creations are the sole tests of his imaginative power. 

ii. Distinct Images Necessary. 

76. If this brief exposition has carried the reader's assent, 
he will readily apply the principle, and recognise that an 
artist produces an effect in virtue of the distinctness with 
which he sees the objects he represents, seeing them not 
vaguely as in vanishing apparitions, but steadily, and in 
their most characteristic relations. To this Vision he adds 
artistic skill with which to make us see. He may have 
clear conceptions, yet fail to make them clear to us : in this 
case he has imagination, but is not an artist. Without clear 
Vision no skill can avail. Imperfect Vision necessitates 
imperfect representation ; words take the place of ideas. 

77. In Young's ' Night Thoughts' there are many exam- 
ples of the psei^o-imaginative, betraying an utter want of 
steady Vision. Here is one : — 

" His hand the good man fastens on the skies, 
And bids earth roll, nor feels her idle whirl." 

"Pause for a moment," remarks a critic, 1 "to realise the 
image, and the monstrous absurdity of a man's grasping the 

1 George Eliot, in the article just noted. The lines, which are from 
'Night' IV., are misquoted both in the Westminster Review and in the 
Fortnightly. 



70 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

skies and hanging habitually suspended there, while he con- 
temptuously bids earth roll, warns you that no genuine 
feeling could have suggested so unnatural a conception." 1 
It is obvious that if Young had imagined the position he 
assigned to the good man he would have seen its absurdity ; 
instead of imagining, he allowed the vague transient sug- 
gestion of half-nascent images to shape themselves in verse. 
78. Now compare with this a passage in which imagina- 
tion is really active. Wordsworth recalls how — 

1 ' In November days, 
When vapours rolling down the valleys made 
A lonely scene more lonesome; among woods 
At noon; and mid the calm of summer nights, 
When, by the margin of the trembling lake, 
Beneath the gloomy hills, homeward I went 
In solitude, such intercourse was mine." 

There is nothing very grand or impressive in this passage, 
and therefore it is a better illustration for my purpose. 
Note how happily the one image, out of a thousand possible 
images by which November might be characterised, is 
chosen to call up in us the feeling of the lonely scene ; and 
with what delicate selection the calm of summer nights, the 
"trembling lake" (an image in an epithet), and the gloomy 
hills, are brought before us. His boyhood might have fur- 
nished him with a hundred different pictures, each as dis- 
tinct as this ; the power is shown in selecting this one — 
painting it so vividly. He continues : — 

" Mine was it in the fields both day and night 
And by the waters, all the summer long. 

1 One further passage from the same article is worth quoting: "No 
writer whose rhetoric was checked by the slightest truthful intentions, 

could have said, — . . 

1 An eye of awe and wonder let me roll, 

And roll for ever.' 

Abstracting the mere poetical associations with the eye, this is hardly less 
absurd than if he had wished to stand forever with his mouth open." 



Of Vision in Art. 71 

And in the frosty season, when the sun 

Was set, and, visible for many a mile, 

The cottage windows through the twilight blazed, 

I heeded not the summons : happy time 

It was indeed for all of us ; for me 

It was a time of rapture ! Clear and loud 

The village- clock tolled six — I wheeled about, 

Proud and exulting like an untired horse 

That cares not for his home. All shod with steel 

We hissed along the polished ice, in games 

Confederate, imitative of the chase 

And woodland pleasures, — the resounding horn, 

The pack loud-chiming, and the hunted hare." 

79. There is nothing very felicitous in these lines ; yet 
even here the poet, if languid, is never false. As he pro- 
ceeds the vision brightens, and the verse becomes instinct 
with life : — 

" So through the darkness and the cold we flew, 
And not a voice was idle : with the din 
Smitten, the precipices rang aloud ; 
The leafless trees and every icy crag 
Tinkled, like iron; while far- distant hills 
Into the tumult sent an alien sound 
Of melancholy, not unnoticed while the stars, 
Eastward, were sparkling clear, and in the west 
The orange sky of evening died away. 

" Not seldom from the uproar I retired 
Into a silent bay, or sportively 
Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng, 
To cut across the reflex of a star ; 
Image, that, flying still before me, gleamed 
Upon the glassy plain : and oftentimes, 
When we had given our bodies to the wind, 
And all the shadowy banks on either side 
Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still 
The rapid line of motion, then at once 
Have I, reclining back upon my heels, 
Stopped short ; yet still the solitary cliffs 



72 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

Wheeled by me — even as if the earth had rolled 
With visible motion her diurnal round ! 
Behind me did they stretch in solemn train, 
Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watched 
Till all was tranquil as a summer sea." * 

79 a. Every poetical reader will feel delight in the accu- 
racy with which the details are painted, and the marvelous 
clearness with which the whole scene is imagined, both in 
its objective and subjective relations, i.e., both in the objects 
seen and the emotions they suggest. 

80. What the majority of modern verse writers call 
/" imagery," is not the product of imagination, but a restless 
pursuit of comparison, and a lax use of language. Instead 
of presenting us with an image of the object, they present 
us with something which they tell us is like the object — 
which it rarely is. The thing itself has no clear signifi- 
cance to them, it is only a text for the display of their 
ingenuity. If, however, we turn from poetasters to poets, 
we see great accuracy in depicting the things themselves or 
their suggestions, so that we may be certain the things pre- 
sented themselves in the field of the poet's vision, and were 
painted because seen. The images arose with sudden vivac- 
ity, or were detained long enough to enable their characters 
to be seized. It is this power of detention to which I 
would call particular notice, because a valuable practical 
lesson may be learned through a proper estimate of it. If 
clear Vision be indispensable to success in Art, all means 
of securing that clearness should be sought. Now one 

1 The fragment from which these lines are quoted first appeared in 1809 
in the magazine known as The Friend. It was republished several times 
under the title ' Influence of Natural Objects in Calling Forth and Strength- 
ening the Imagination in Boyhood and Early Youth/ and was finally incor- 
porated in Book I. of ' The Prelude.' Lewes, in the Fortnightly text, seems 
to be quoting, not always accurately, from an edition prior to that of 1845. 
The lines as given here are corrected to agree with the text of Knight's 
edition, Vol. II., pp. 53-54. 



Of Vision in Art. 73 

means is that of detaining an image long enough before the 
mind to allow of its being seen in all its characteristics. 
The explanation Newton gave of his discovery of the great 
law, points in this direction ; it was by always thinking of 
the subject, by keeping it constantly before his mind, that 
he finally saw the truth. Artists brood over the chaos of 
their suggestions, and thus shape them into creations. Try 
and form a picture in your own mind of your early skating 
experience. It may be that the scene only comes back 
upon you in shifting outlines, you recall the general facts, 
and some few particulars are vivid, but the greater part of 
the details vanish again before they can assume decisive 
shape ; they are but half nascent, or die as soon as born : a 
wave of recollection washes over the mind, but it quickly 
retires, leaving no trace behind. This is the common ex- 
perience. Or it may be that the whole scene flashes upon 
you with peculiar vividness, so that you see, almost as in 
actual presence, all the leading characteristics of the picture. 1 
Wordsworth may have seen his early days in a succession 
of vivid flashes, or he may have attained to his distinctness 
of vision by a steadfast continuity of effort, in which what 
at first was vague became slowly definite as he gazed. It is 
certain that only a very imaginative mind could have seen 
such details as he has gathered together in the lines describ- 
ing how he 

" Cut across the reflex of a star ; 

Image, that, flying still before me, gleamed 
Upon the glassy plain. ' ' 

81. The whole description may have been written with 
great rapidity, or with anxious and tentative labour: the 

1 " They flash upon that inward eye 
Which is the bliss of solitude. " 

— Mrs. Wordsworth, in ' The Daffodils.' 

Wordsworth says of this poem, "The subject of these stanzas is rather 
an elementary feeling and simple impression (approaching to the nature of 
an ocular spectrum) upon the imaginative faculty, than an exertion of it." 



74 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

memories of boyish days may have been kindled with a 
sudden illumination, or they may have grown slowly into 
the requisite distinctness, detail after detail emerging from 
the general obscurity, like the appearing stars at night. 
But whether the poet felt his way to images and epithets, 
rapidly or slowly, is unimportant ; we have to do only with 
the result ; and the result implies, as an absolute condition, 
that the images were distinct. Only thus could they serve 
the purposes of poetry, which must arouse in us memories 
of similar scenes, and kindle emotions of pleasurable ex- 
perience. 

iii. Burke on Indistinct Imagery. 

82. Having cited an example of bad writing consequent 
on imperfect Vision, and an example of good writing conse- 
quent on accurate Vision, I might consider that enough had 
been done for the immediate purpose of the present chap- 
ter; the many other illustrations which the Principle of 
Vision would require before it could be considered as ade- 
quately expounded, I must defer till I come to treat of the 
application of principles. But before closing this chapter 
it may be needful to examine some arguments which have 
a contrary tendency, and imply, or seem to imply, that dis- 
tinctness of Vision is very far from necessary. 

83. At the outset we must come to an understanding as 
to this word " image," and endeavour to free the word " vis- 
ion" from all equivoque. If these words were understood 
literally there would be an obvious absurdity in speaking 
of an image of a sound, or of seeing an emotion. Yet if by 
means of symbols the effect of a sound is produced in us, 
or the psychological state of any human being is rendered 
intelligible to us, we are said to have images of these things, 
which the poet has imagined. It is because the eye is the 
most valued and intellectual of our senses that the majority 
of metaphors are borrowed from its sensations. Language, 



Of Vision in Art. 75 

after all, is only the use of symbols, and Art also can only 
affect us through symbols. If a phrase can summon a 
terror resembling that summoned by the danger which it 
indicates, a man is said to see the danger. Sometimes a 
phrase will awaken more vivid images of danger than 
would be called up by the actual presence of the dangerous 
object ; because the mind will more readily apprehend the 
symbols of the phrase than interpret the indications of 
unassisted sense. 

84. Burke, in his i Essay on the Sublime and Beauti- 
ful/ 1 lays down the proposition that distinctness of im- 
agery is often injurious to the effect of Art. "It is one 
thing," he says, " to make an idea clear, another to make it 
affecting to the imagination. If I make a drawing of a pal- 
ace or a temple or a landscape, I present a very clear idea of 
those objects ; but then (allowing for the effect of imita- 
tion, which is something) my picture can at most affect only 
as the palace, temple, or landscape would have affected in 
reality. On the other hand, the most lively and spirited 
verbal description I can give raises a very obscure and im- 
perfect idea of such objects ; 2 but then it is in my power to 
raise a stronger emotion by the description than I could do by 
the best painting. This experience constantly evinces. The 
proper manner of conveying the affections of the mind from 

i Part II., Sect. IV. 

2 « t F a j r j g ft er cottage in its place, 
"Where yon broad water sweetly slowly glides. 

It sees itself from thatch to base 
Dream in the sliding tides.' 

" I cannot call up any vision of this scene which gives me any vivid pleas- 
ure, nor are any two visions of it that I call up alike. For visualising pur- 
poses I should be much assisted by knowing how many windows the cottage 
had, where the door was, how many trees there were about, and so on. 
Nevertheless, I w r ould assert with confidence that the stanza has produced 
in me, and doubtless in many others, greater rushes of delightful emotion 
than the sight of what is described has ever produced in any human 
being." — Gurney's 'Power of Sound,' p. 449, note. 



76 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

one to another is by words ; there is great insufficiency in 
all other methods of communication ; and so far is a clear- 
ness of imagery from being absolutely necessary to an in- 
fluence upon the passions, that they may be considerably 
operated upon without presenting any image at all, by cer- 
tain sounds adapted to that purpose." If by image is meant 
only what the eye can see, Burke is undoubtedly right. But 
this is obviously not our restricted meaning of the word 
when we speak of poetic imagery; and Burke's error be- 
comes apparent when he proceeds to show that there " are 
reasons in nature why the obscure idea, when properly con- 
veyed, should be more affecting than the clear." He does 
not seem to have considered that the idea of an indefinite 
object can only be properly conveyed by indefinite images; 
any image of Eternity or Death that pretended to visual dis- 
tinctness would be false. Having overlooked this, he says, 
" We do not anywhere meet a more sublime description than 
this justly celebrated one of Milton, wherein he gives the 
portrait of Satan with a dignity so suitable to the subject: — 

11 ' He, above the rest 
In shape and gesture proudly eminent, 
Stood like a tower. His form had not yet lost 
All her original brightness, nor appeared 
Less than archangel ruined, and the excess 
Of glory obscured : as when the sun new-risen 
Looks through the horizontal misty air 
Shorn of his beams, or, from behind the moon, 
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds 
On half the nations, and with fear of change 
Perplexes monarchs.' 1 

Here is a very noble picture," adds Burke, "and in what 
does this poetical picture consist ? In images of a tower, 
an archangel, the sun rising through mists, or in an eclipse, 
the ruin of monarchs, and the revolutions of kingdoms." 

i< Paradise Lost,' Book L, 11. 589-599. 



Of Vision in Art. 77 

Instead of recognising the imagery here as the source of the 
power, he says, " The mind is hurried out of itself [rather 
a strange result !] by a crowd of great and confused images; 
which affect because they are crowded and confused. For, 
separate them, and you lose much of the greatness; and 
join them, and you infallibly lose the clearness." This is 
altogether a mistake. The images are vivid enough to make 
us feel the hovering presence of an awe-inspiring figure 
having the height and firmness of a tower, and the dusky 
splendour of a ruined archangel. The poet indicates only 
that amount of concreteness which is necessary for the 
clearness of the picture, — only the height and firmness of 
the tower and the brightness of the sun in eclipse. More 
concreteness would disturb the clearness by calling atten- 
tion to irrelevant details. To suppose that these images 
produce the effect because they are crowded and confused 
(they are crowded and not confused) is to imply that any 
other images would do equally well, if they were equally 
crowded. " Separate them, and you lose much of the great- 
ness." Quite true : the image of the tower would want the 
splendour of the sun. But this much may be said of all 
descriptions which proceed upon details. And so far from 
the impressive clearness of the picture vanishing in the 
crowd of images, it is by these images that the clearness is 
produced: the details make it impressive, and affect our 
imagination. 

85. It should be added that Burke came very near a true 
explanation in the following passage : — "It will be difficult 
to conceive how words can move the passions which belong 
to real objects without representing these objects clearly. 
This is difficult to us because we do not sufficiently distin- 
guish, in our observations upon language, between a clear 
expression and a strong expression. The former regards 
the understanding; the latter belongs to the passions. The 
one describes a thing as it is, the other describes it as it is 



78 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

felt. Now as there is a moving tone of voice, an impas- 
sioned countenance, an agitated gesture, which affect inde- 
pendently of the things about which they are exerted, so 
there are words and certain dispositions of words which 
being peculiarly devoted to passionate subjects, and always 
used by those who are under the influence of any passion, 
touch and move us more than those which far more clearly 
and distinctly express the subject-matter." 1 Burke here 
fails to see that the tones, looks, and gestures are the intel- 
ligible symbols of passion — the " images " in the true sense 
— just as words are the intelligible symbols of ideas. The 
subject-matter is as clearly expressed by the one as by 
the other ; for if the description of a Lion be conveyed in 
the symbols of admiration or of terror, the subject-matter is 
then a Lion passionately and not zoologically considered. 2 
And this Burke himself was led to admit, for he adds, "We 
yield to sympathy what we refuse to description. The 
truth is, all verbal description, merely as naked description, 
though never so exact, conveys so poor and insufficient an 
idea of the thing described, that it could scarcely have the 
smallest effect if the speaker did not call in to his aid those 
modes of speech that mark a strong and lively feeling in 
himself. Then, by the contagion of our passions, we catch 
a fire already kindled in another." This is very true, and 
it sets clearly forth the fact that naked description, ad- 
dressed to the calm understanding, has a different subject- 
matter from description addressed to the feelings, and the 
symbols by which it is made intelligible must likewise dif- 
fer. But this in no way impugns the Principle of Vision. 
Intelligible symbols (clear images) are as necessary in the 
one case as in the other. 

i Part V., Sect. VII. 

2 See J. S. Mill's 'Dissertations and Discussions,' Vol. I., 'Thoughts on 
Poetry and its Varieties,' from which this illustration is taken. 



Of Vision in Art. 79 



iv. Imagination and Memory, 

86. By reducing imagination to the power of forming 
images, and by insisting that no image can be formed 
except out of the elements furnished by experience, I do 
not mean to confound imagination with memory; indeed, 
the frequent occurrence of great strength of memory with 
comparative feebleness of imagination, would suffice to warn 
us against such a conclusion. 

87. Its specific character, that which marks it off from ^ 
simple memory, is its tendency to selection, abstraction, and 
recombination. Memory, as passive, simply recalls previous 
experiences of objects and emotions ; from these, imagina- 
tion, as an active faculty, selects the elements which vividly 
symbolise the objects or emotions, and either by a process 
of abstraction allows these to do duty for the wholes, or 
else by a process of recombination creates new objects and 
new relations in which the objects stand to us or to each 
other {invention), and the result is an image of great vivid- 
ness, which has perhaps no corresponding reality in the 
external world. 

88. Minds differ in the vividness with which they recall 
the elements of previous experience, and mentally see the 
absent objects ; they differ also in the aptitudes for selec- 
tion, abstraction, and recombination : the fine selective 
instinct of the artist, which makes him fasten upon the 
details which will most powerfully affect us, without any 
disturbance of the harmony of the general impression, does 
not depend solely upon the vividness of his memory and 
the clearness with which the objects are seen, but depends 
also upon very complex and peculiar conditions of sympathy 
which we call genius. Hence we find one man remembering 
a multitude of details, with a memory so vivid that it al- 
most amounts at times to hallucination, yet without any 



80 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

artistic power ; and we may find men — Blake was one — 
with an imagination of unusual activity, who are neverthe- 
less incapable, from deficient sympathy, of seizing upon 
those symbols which will most affect us. 1 Our native sus- 
ceptibilities and acquired tastes determine which of the 
many qualities in an object shall most impress us, and be 
most clearly recalled. One man remembers the combusti- 
ble properties of a substance, which to another is memora- 
ble for its polarising property ; to one man a stream is so 
much water-power, to another a rendezvous for lovers. 

89. In the close of the last paragraph we came face to 
face with the great difficulty which constantly arrests spec- 
ulation on these matters — the existence of special apti- 
tudes vaguely characterised as genius. These are obviously 
incommunicable. No recipe can be given for genius. No 
man can be taught how to exercise the power of imagina- 
tion. But he can be taught how to aid it, and how to 
assure himself whether he is using it or not. Having once 
laid hold of the Principle of Vision as a fundamental prin- 
ciple of Art, he can always thus far apply it, that he can 
assure himself whether he does or does not distinctly see 
the cottage he is describing, the rivulet that is gurgling 
through his verses, or the character he is painting ; he can 
assure himself whether he hears the voice of the speakers, 
and feels that what they say is true to their natures \. he 

1 Swinburne's criticism of Blake's illustrations to Dante's ' Inferno ' 
brings out clearly this defect of Blake's genius. " Blake has thoroughly 
understood and given back the physical symbols of this first punishment in 
Dante ; the whirling motion of his figures has, however, more of blind 
violence and brute speed than the text seems to indicate. They are dashed 
and dragged, one upon another . . . not moved as we expect to see them, in 
sad rapidity of stately measure and even time of speed. The flame-like 
impulse of idea, natural to Blake, cannot absolutely match itself against 
Dante's divine justice and intense innate forbearance in detail; nor so 
comprehend, as by dint of reproduction to compete with, that supreme 
sense of inward and outward right which rules and attunes every word of 
the Commedia."-—' William Blake,' p. 75. 



Of Vision in Art. 81 

can assure himself whether he sees, as in actual experience, 
the emotion he is depicting ; and he will know that if he 
does not see these things he must wait until he can, or he 
will paint them ineffectively. With distinct Vision he will 
be able to make the best use of his powers of expression ; 
and the most splendid powers of expression will not avail 
him if his Vision be indistinct. This is true of objects that 
never were seen by the eye, that never could be seen. It is 
as true of what are called the highest flights of imagination 
as of the lowest flights. The mind must see the angel or 
the demon, the hippogriff or centaur, the pixie or the mer- 
maid. 

90. Euskin notices l how repeatedly Turner, — the most 
imaginative of landscape painters, — introduced into his 
pictures, after a lapse of many years, memories of some- 
thing which, however small and unimportant, had struck 
him in his earlier studies. He believes that all Turner's 
" composition " was an arrangement of remembrances sum- 
moned just as they were wanted, and each in its fittest 
place. His vision was primarily composed of strong mem- 
ory of the place itself, and secondarily of memories of other 
places associated in a harmonious, helpful way with the 
now central thought. He recalled and selected. 

91. I am prepared to hear of many readers, especially 
young readers, protesting against the doctrine of this chap- 
ter as prosaic. They have been so long accustomed to 
consider imagination as peculiarly distinguished by its dis- 
dain of reality, and Invention as only admirable when its ^ 
products are not simply new by selection and arrangement, 
but new in material, that they will reject the idea of 
involuntary remembrance of something originally experi- 
enced as the basis of all Art. Euskin says of great artists, 

" Imagine all that any of these men had seen or heard in 

1 < Modern Painters,' IV., Chap. II., Sect. 16, 



82 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

the whole course of their lives, laid up accurately in their 
memories as in vast storehouses, extending, with the poets 
even to the slightest intonations of syllables heard in the 
beginning of their lives, and with the painters, down to 
minute folds of drapery, and shapes of leaves or stones ; 
and over all this unindexed and immeasurable mass of 
treasure, the imagination brooding and wandering, but 
dream-gifted, so as to summon at any moment exactly such 
groups of ideas as shall justly fit each other." * This is the 
explanation of their genius, as far as it can be explained. 

92. Genius is rarely able to give any account of its own 
processes. But those who have had ample opportunities of 
intimately knowing the growth of works in the minds of 
artists, will bear me out in saying that a vivid memory sup- 
plies the elements from a thousand different sources, most 
of which are quite beyond the power of localisation, — the 
experience of yesterday being strangely intermingled with 
the dim suggestions of early years, the tones heard in child- 
hood sounding through the diapason of sorrowing maturity ; 
and all these kaleidoscopic fragments are recomposed into 
images that seem to have a corresponding reality of their 
own. 

v. Idealism and Realism. 

93. As all Art depends on Vision, so the different kinds 
of Art depend on the different ways in which minds look 
at things. The painter can only put into his pictures what 
he see in Nature ; and what he sees will be different from 
what another sees. A poetical mind sees noble and affect- 
ing suggestions in details which the prosaic mind will inter- 
pret prosaically. And the true meaning of Idealism is 
precisely this vision of realities in their highest and most 
affecting forms, not in the vision of something removed 

i 'Modern Painters,' IV., Chap. II., Sect. 17. 



Of Vision in Art. 83 

from or opposed to realities. Titian's grand picture of 
' Peter the Martyr ' is, perhaps, as instructive an example 
as could be chosen of successful Idealism ; because in it we 
have a marvelous presentation of reality as seen by a poetic 
mind. The figure of the flying monk might have been 
equally real if it had been an ignoble presentation of terror 
— the superb tree, which may almost be called an actor in 
the drama, might have been painted with even greater 
minuteness, though not perhaps with equal effect upon us, 
if it had arrested our attention by its details — the dying 
martyr and the noble assassin might have been made equally 
real in more vulgar types — but the triumph achieved by 
Titian is that the mind is filled with a vision of poetic 
beauty which is felt to be real. 1 An equivalent reality, with- 
out the ennobling beauty, would have made the picture a 
fine piece of realistic art. It is because of this poetic way 
of seeing things that one painter will give a faithful repre- 
sentation of a very common scene which shall nevertheless 
affect all sensitive minds as ideal, whereas another painter 
will represent the same with no greater fidelity, but with 
a complete absence of poetry. The greater the fidelity, the 
greater will be the merit of each representation ; for if a 
man pretends to represent an object, he pretends to repre- 
sent it accurately : the only difference is what the poetical 
or prosaic mind sees in the object. 

94. Of late years there has been a reaction against con- 
ventionalism which called itself Idealism, in favour of detail- 
ism which calls itself Realism. As a reaction it has been 
of service ; but it has led to much false criticism, and not 
a little false art, by an obtrusiveness of Detail and a prefer- 
ence for the Familiar, under the misleading notion of ad- 
herence to Nature. If the words Nature and Natural 
could be entirely banished from language about Art there 

1 A reproduction of the painting will be found in Heath's ' Titian ' (opp. 
p. 44). 



84 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

would be some chance of coming to a rational philosophy 
of the subject ; at present the excessive vagueness and 
shiftiness of these terms cover any amount of sophism. 
The pots and pans of Teniers and Van Mieris are natural ; 
the passions and humours of Shakspeare and Moliere are 
natural ; the angels of Era Angelico and Luini are natural ; 
the Sleeping Fawn and Fates of Phidias are natural ; the 
cows and misty marshes of Cuyp and the vacillations of 
Hamlet are equally natural. In fact the natural means 
truth of kind. Each kind of character, each kind of repre- 
sentation, must be judged by itself. Whereas the vulgar 
error of criticism is to judge of one kind by another, and 
generally to judge the higher by the lower, to remonstrate 
with Hamlet for not having the speech and manner of Mr. 
Jones, to wish that Fra Angelico could have seen with the 
eyes of the Carracci, to wish verse had been prose, and that 
ideal tragedy were acted with the easy manner acceptable in 
drawing-rooms. 

95. The rage for " realism," which is healthy in as far as 
it insists on truth, has become unhealthy, in as far as it 
confounds truth with familiarity, and predominance of 
unessential details. There are other truths besides coats 
and waistcoats, pots and pans, drawing-rooms and suburban 
villas. 1 Life has other aims besides those which occupy 
the conversation of " Society." And the painter who de- 
votes years to a work representing modern life, yet calls 
for even more attention to a waistcoat than to the face of 
a philosopher, may exhibit truth of detail which will delight 
the tailor- mind, but he is defective in artistic truth, because 
he ought to be representing something higher than waist- 
coats, and because our thoughts on modern life fall very 
casually and without emphasis on waistcoats. In Piloty's 
much-admired picture of the ' Death of Wallenstein' (at 

i Cf. Lewes's article, ' Realism in Art,' published in the Westminster 
Review for October, 1858. 









Of Vision in Art. 85 

Munich), the truth with which the carpet, the velvet, and 
all other accessories are painted, is certainly remarkable ; 
but the falsehood of giving prominence to such details in a 
picture representing the dead Wallenstein — as if they were 
the objects which could possibly arrest our attention and 
excite our sympathies in such a spectacle — is a falsehood 
of the realistic school. If a man means to paint upholstery, 
by all means let him paint it so as to delight and deceive an 
upholsterer ; but if he means to paint a human tragedy, the 
upholsterer must be subordinate, and velvet must not draw 
our eyes away from faces. 1 

96. I have digressed a little from my straight route be- 
cause I wish to guard the Principle of Vision from certain 
misconceptions which might arise on a simple statement of 
it. The principle insists on the artist assuring himself that 
he distinctly sees what he attempts to represent. What he 
sees, and how he represents it, depend on other principles. 
To make even this principle of Vision thoroughly intelli- 
gible in its application to all forms of Literature and Art, 
it must be considered in connection with the two other 
principles — Sincerity and Beauty, which are involved in 
all successful works. In the next chapter we shall treat of 
Sincerity. 

!Cf. Lewes's < Life of Goethe,' Vol. I., pp. 240-267; Everett's 'Poetry, 
Comedy, and Duty,' pp. 88-97; Dewey's 'Psychology,' pp. 312-313; Sted- 
man's ' Victorian Poets,' pp. 11-32. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE PRINCIPLE OF SINCERITY. 

i. Literature and the Public. 

97. It is always understood as an expression of condem- 
nation when anything in Literature or Art is said to be 
done for effect 5 and yet to produce an effect is the aim and 
end of both. 

98. There is nothing beyond a verbal ambiguity here if 
we look at it closely, and yet there is a corresponding uncer- 
tainty in the conception of Literature and Art commonly 
entertained, which leads many writers and many critics into 
the belief that what are called " effects " should be sought, 
and when found must succeed. It is desirable to clear up 
this moral ambiguity, as I may call it, and to show that the 
real method of securing the legitimate effect is not to aim 
at it, but to aim at the truth, relying on that for securing 
effect. The condemnation of whatever is " done for effect " 
obviously springs from indignation at a disclosed insincerity 
in the artist, who is self-convicted of having neglected truth 
for the sake of our applause ; and we refuse our applause 
to the flatterer, or give it contemptuously as to a mounte- 
bank whose dexterity has amused us. 

99. It is unhappily true that much insincere Literature 
and Art, executed solely with a view to effect, does succeed 
by deceiving the public. But this is only because the simu- 
lation of truth or the blindness of the public conceals the 
insincerity. As a maxim, the Principle of Sincerity is 
admitted. Nothing but what is true, or is held to be true, 
can succeed ; anything which looks like insincerity is con- 

86 



The Principle of Sincerity. 87 

demned. In this respect we may compare it with the 
maxim of Honesty the best policy. No far-reaching intel- 
lect fails to perceive that if all. men were uniformly upright 
and truthful, Life would be more victorious, and Literature 
more noble. We find, however, both in Life and Litera- 
ture, a practical disregard of the truth of these proposi- 
tions almost equivalent to a disbelief in them. Many men 
are keenly alive to the social advantages of honesty — in 
the practice of others. They are also strongly impressed 
with the conviction that in their own particular case the 
advantage will sometimes lie in not strictly adhering to the 
rule. Honesty is doubtless the best policy in the long run ; 
but somehow the run here seems so very long, and a short- 
cut opens such allurements to impatient desire. It requires 
a firm calm insight, or a noble habit of thought, to steady 
the wavering mind, and direct it away from delusive short- 
cuts : to make belief practice, and forego immediate triumph. 
Many of those who unhesitatingly admit Sincerity to be 
one great condition of success in Literature find it difficult, 
and often impossible, to resist the temptation of an insin- 
cerity which promises immediate advantage. It is not only 
the grocers who sand their sugar before prayers. Writers 
who know well enough that the triumph of falsehood is an 
unholy triumph, are not deterred from falsehood by that 
knowledge. They know, perhaps, that, even if undetected, 
it will press on their own consciences ; but the knowledge 
avails them little. The immediate pressure of the tempta- 
tion is yielded to, and Sincerity remains a text to be 
preached to others. To gain applause they will misstate 
facts, to gain victory in argument they will misrepresent 
the opinions they oppose ; and they suppress the rising mis- 
givings by the dangerous sophism that to discredit error is 
good work, and by the hope that no one will detect the 
means by which the work is effected. The saddest aspect 
of this procedure is that in Literature, as in Life, a tempo- 



88 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

rary success often does reward dishonesty. It would be 
insincere to conceal it. To gain a reputation as discoverers 
men will invent or suppress facts. To appear learned, they 
will array their writings in the ostentation of borrowed 
citations. To solicit the " sweet voices " of the crowd, they 
will feign sentiments they do not feel, and utter what they 
think the crowd will wish to hear, keeping back whatever 
the crowd will hear with disapproval. And, as I said, such 
men often succeed for a time ; the fact is so, and we must 
not pretend that it is otherwise. But it no more disturbs 
the fundamental truth of the Principle of Sincerity than 
the perturbations in the orbit of Mars disturb the truth of 
Kepler's law. 

100. It is impossible to deny that dishonest men often 
grow rich and famous, becoming powerful in their parish or 
in parliament. Their portraits simper from shop windows ; 
and they live and die respected. This success is theirs ; 
yet it is not the success which a noble soul will envy. 
Apart from the risk of discovery and infamy, there is the 
certainty of a conscience ill at ease, or if at ease, so blunted 
in its sensibilities, so given over to lower lusts, that a 
healthy instinct recoils from such a state. Observe, more- 
over, that in Literature the possible rewards of dishonesty 
are small, and the probability of detection great. In Life 
a dishonest man is chiefly moved by desires towards some 
tangible result of money or power ; if he get these he has 
got all. The man of letters has a higher aim; the very 
object of his toil is to secure the sympathy and respect of 
men ; and the rewards of his toil may be paid in money, 
fame, or consciousness of earnest effort. The first of these 
may sometimes be gained without Sincerity. Fame may 
also, for a time, be erected on an unstable ground, though 
it will inevitably be destroyed again. But the last and not 
least reward is to be gained by every one without fear of 
failure, without risk of change. Sincere work is good work, 



The Principle of Sincerity. 89 

be it never so humble ; arid sincere work is not only an 
indestructible delight to the worker by its very genuine- 
ness; but is immortal in the best sense, for it lives for ever 
in its influence. There is no good Dictionary, not even a 
good Index, that is not in this sense priceless, for it has 
honestly furthered the work of the world, saving labour to 
others, setting an example to successors. Whether I make 
a careful Index, or an inaccurate one, will probably in no 
respect affect the money-payment I shall receive. My sins 
will never fall heavily on me ; my virtue will gain me 
neither extra pence nor praise. I shall be hidden by 
obscurity from the indignation of those whose valuable 
time is wasted over my pretence at accuracy, as from the 
silent gratitude of those whose time is saved by my honest 
fidelity. The consciousness of faithfulness even to the poor 
index maker may be a better reward than pence or praise ; 
but of course we cannot expect the unconscientious to 
believe this. If I sand my sugar, and tell lies over my 
counter, I may gain the rewards of dishonesty, or I may be 
overtaken by its Nemesis. But if I am faithful in my 
work the reward cannot be withheld from me. The obscure 
workers who, knowing that they will never earn renown yet 
feel an honourable pride in doing their work faithfully, may 
be likened to the benevolent who feel a noble delight in 
performing generous actions which will never be known to 
be theirs, the only end they seek in such actions being the 
good which is wrought for others, and their delight being 
the sympathy with others. 

101. I should be ashamed to insist on truths so little 
likely to be disputed, did they not point directly at the 
great source of bad Literature, which, as was said in our 
first chapter, springs from a want of proper moral guidance 
rather than from deficiency of talent. The Principle of 
Sincerity comprises all those qualities of courage, patience, 
honesty, and simplicity which give momentum to talent, and 



90 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

determine successful Literature. It is not enough to have 
the eye to see ; there must also be the courage to express 
what the eye has seen, and the steadfastness of a trust in 
truth. Insight, imagination, grace of style are potent ; but 
their power is delusive unless sincerely guided. If any one 
should object that this is a truism, the answer is ready: 
Writers disregard its truth, as traders disregard the truism 
of honesty being the best policy. Nay, as even the most 
upright men are occasionally liable to swerve from the 
truth, so the most upright authors will in some passages 
desert a perfect sincerity ; yet the ideal of both is rigorous 
truth. Men who are never flagrantly dishonest are at times 
unveracious in small matters, colouring or suppressing facts 
with a conscious purpose ; and writers who never stole an 
idea nor pretended to honours for which they had not 
striven, may be found lapsing into small insincerities, 
speaking a language which is not theirs, uttering opinions 
which they expect to gain applause rather than the opin- 
ions really believed by them. But if few men are perfectly 
and persistently sincere, Sincerity is nevertheless the only 
enduring strength. 

102. The principle is universal, stretching from the high- 
est purposes of Literature down to its smallest details. It 
underlies the labour of the philosopher, the investigator, 
the moralist, the poet, the novelist, the critic, the historian, 
and the compiler. It is visible in the publication of opin- 
ions, in the structure of sentences, and in the fidelity of 
citations. Men utter insincere thoughts, they express them- 
selves in echoes and affectations, and they are careless or 
dishonest in their use of the labours of others, all the time 
believing in the virtue of sincerity, all the time trying to 
make others believe honesty to be the best policy. 

103. Let us glance for a moment at the most important 
applications of the principle. A man must be himself con- 
vinced if he is to convince others. The prophet must be 



The Principle of Sincerity. 91 

his own disciple, or he will make none. Enthusiasm is 
contagious: belief creates belief. There is no influence 
issuing from unbelief or from languid acquiescence. This 
is peculiarly noticeable in Art, because Art depends on 
sympathy for its influence, and unless the artist has felt 
the emotions he depicts we remain unmoved : in proportion 
to the depth of his feeling is our sympathetic response ; in 
proportion to the shallowness or falsehood of his presenta- 
tion is our coldness or indifference. Many writers who 
have been fond of quoting the si vis me flere 1 of Horace 
have written as if they did not believe- a word of it; for 
they have been silent on their own convictions, suppressed 
their own experience, and falsified their own feelings to 
repeat the convictions and fine phrases of another. I am 
sorry that my experience assures me that many of those 
who will read with complete assent all here written respect- 
ing the power of Sincerity, will basely desert their alle- 
giance to the truth the next time they begin to write ; and 
they will desert it because their misguided views of Litera- 
ture prompt them to think more of what the public is likely 
to applaud than of what is worth applause ; unfortunately 
for them their estimation of this likelihood is generally 
based on a very erroneous assumption of public wants : 
they grossly mistake the taste they pander to. 

ii. The Value of Sincerity. 

104. In all sincere speech there is power, not necessarily 
great power, but as much as the speaker is capable of. 
Speak for yourself and from yourself, or be silent. It can 
be of no good that you should tell in your " clever " feeble 
way what another has already told us with the dynamic 

1 'De Arte Poetica,' 1. 102. " If you wish me to weep, you must yourself 
grieve first." See the Critic for March 24 and March 31, 1888, for a dis- 
cussion of this maxim. 



92 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

energy of conviction. If you can tell us something that 
your own eyes have seen, your own mind has thought, your 
own heart has felt, you will have power over us, and all the 
real power that is possible for you. If what you have seen 
is trivial, if what you have thought is erroneous, if what 
you have felt is feeble, it would assuredly be better that 
you should not speak at all ; but if you insist on speaking 
Sincerity will secure the uttermost of power. 

105. The delusions of self-love cannot be prevented, but 
intellectual misconceptions as to the means of achieving 
success may be corrected. Thus although it may not be 
possible for any introspection to discover whether we have 
genius or effective power, it is quite possible to know 
whether we are trading upon borrowed capital, and whether 
the eagle's feathers have been picked up by us, or grow 
from our own wings. I hear some one of my young readers 
exclaim against the disheartening tendency of what is here 
said. Ambitious of success, and conscious that he has no 
great resources within his own experience, he shrinks from 
the idea of being thrown upon his naked faculty and limited 
resources, when he feels himself capable of dexterously 
using the resources of others, and so producing an effective 
work. " Why," he asks, " must I confine myself to my own 
small experience, when I feel persuaded that it will interest 
no one ? Why express the opinions to which my own 
investigations have led me when I suspect that they are 
incomplete, perhaps altogether erroneous, and when I know 
that they will not be popular because they are unlike those 
which have hitherto found favour ? Your restrictions would 
reduce two-thirds of our writers to silence ! " 

106. This reduction would, I suspect, be welcomed by 
every one except the gagged writers ; but as the idea of its 
being operative is too chimerical for us to entertain it, and 
as the purpose of these pages is to expound the principles 
of success and failure, not to make Quixotic onslaughts on 



The Principle of Sincerity. 93 

the windmills of stupidity and conceit, I answer my young 
interrogator : " Take warning and do not write. Unless 
you believe in yourself, only noodles will believe in you, 
and they but tepidly. If your experience seems trivial to 
you, it must seem trivial to us. If your thoughts are not 
fervid convictions, or sincere doubts, they will not have the 
power of convictions and doubts. To believe in yourself is 
the first step ; to proclaim your belief the next. You can- 
not assume the power of another. No jay becomes an eagle 
by borrowing a few eagle feathers. It is true that your 
sincerity will not be a guarantee of power. You may be- 
lieve that to be important and novel which we all recognise 
as trivial and old. You may be a madman, and believe 
yourself a prophet. You may be a mere echo, and believe 
yourself a voice. These are among the delusions against 
which none of us are protected. But if Sincerity is not 
necessarily a guarantee of power, it is a necessary condition 
of power, and no genius or prophet can exist without it." 

107. " The highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and 
Milton," says Emerson, 1 " is that they set at nought books 
and traditions, and spoke not what men thought, but what 
they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch 
that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from 
within ; more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and 
sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought because 
it is his. In every work of genius we recognise our own 
rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain 
alienated majesty." It is strange that any one who has 
recognised the individuality of all works of lasting influence, 
should not also recognise the fact that his own individual^ 
ought to be steadfastly preserved. 2 As Emerson says in 
continuation, " Great works of art have no more affecting 

1 Essay on ' S elf-Reliance.' 

2 " Individuality of expression is the beginning and end of all art." 
— Goethe, ' Spruche in Prosa, Kunst,' VI. 



94 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our 
spontaneous impressions with good-humoured inflexibility, 
then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other 
side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly 
good sense, precisely what we have thought and felt all the 
time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our opinion 
from another." Accepting the opinions of another and the 
tastes of another is very different from agreement in opinion 
and taste. Originality is independence, not rebellion ; it is 
sincerity, not antagonism. Whatever you believe to be true 
and false, that proclaim to be true and false ; whatever you 
think admirable and beautiful, that should be your model, 
even if all your friends and all the critics storm at you as a 
crotchet-monger and an eccentric. Whether the public will 
feel its truth and beauty at once, or after long years, or 
never cease to regard it as paradox and ugliness, no man 
can foresee ; enough for you to know that you have done 
your best, have been true to yourself, and that the utmost 
power inherent in your work has been displayed. 

108. An orator whose purpose is to persuade men must 
speak the things they wish to hear ; an orator, whose pur- 
pose is to move men, must also avoid disturbing the emo- 
tional effect by any obtrusion of intellectual antagonism ; 
but an author whose purpose is to instruct men, who ap- 
peals to the intellect, must be careless of their opinions, 
and think only of truth. 1 It will often be a question when 
a man is or is not wise in advancing unpalatable opinions, 
or in preaching heresies ; but it can never be a question 

1 It may be questioned whether this distinction of oratory from Litera- 
ture is not commonly over-emphasized. An orator, it may be safely said, 
who thinks more of his audience than he does of the truth, is a bad orator ; 
and, on the other hand, an author who flings the truth insolently in the 
reader's face, is an ill-mannered author. A decent respect for the opinions 
of mankind is as appropriate in the one case as in the other, and in both 
the Principle of Sincerity — a wise, courteous, and rational Sincerity — 
should be supreme. 



The Principle of Sincerity. 95 

that a man should be silent if unprepared to speak the 
truth as he conceives it. Deference to popular opinion is 
one great source of bad writing, and is all the more disas- 
trous because the deference is paid to some purely hypo- 
thetical requirement. When a man fails to see the truth 
of certain generally accepted views, there is no law compel- 
ling him to provoke animosity by announcing his dissent. 
He may be excused if he shrink from the lurid glory of 
martyrdom ; he may be justified in not placing himself in 
a position of singularity. He may even be commended for 
not helping to perplex mankind with doubts which he feels 
to be founded on limited and possibly erroneous investiga- 
tion. But if allegiance to truth lays no stern command 
upon him to speak out his immature dissent, it does lay a 
stern command not to speak out hypocritical assent. There 
are many justifications of silence ; there can be none of 
insincerity. 

109. Nor is this less true of minor questions ; it applies 
equally to opinions on matters of taste and personal feeling. 
Why should I echo what seem to me the extravagant praises 
of Raphael's ' Transfiguration/ when, in truth, I do not 
greatly admire that famous work ? There is no necessity 
for me to speak on the subject at all ; but if I do speak, 
surely it is to utter my impressions, and not to repeat what 
others have uttered. Here, then, is a dilemma; if I say 
what I really feel about this work, after vainly endeavouring 
day after day to discover the transcendent merits discovered 
by thousands (or at least proclaimed by them), there is 
every likelihood of my incurring the contempt of connois- 
seurs, and of being reproached with want of taste in art. 
This is the bugbear which scares thousands. For myself, I 
would rather incur the contempt of connoisseurs than my 
own ; the reproach of defective taste is more endurable than 
the reproach of insincerity. Suppose I am deficient in the 
requisite knowledge and sensibility, shall I be less so by 



96 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

pretending to admire what really gives me no exquisite 
enjoyment ? Will the pleasure I feel in pictures be en- 
hanced because other men consider me right in my admira- 
tion, or diminished because they consider me wrong ? l 

110. The opinion of the majority is not lightly to be 
rejected ; but neither is it to be carelessly echoed. There 
is something noble in the submission to a great renown, 
which makes all reverence a healthy attitude if it be 
genuine. When I think of the immense fame of Raphael, 
and of how many high and delicate minds have found ex- 
quisite delight even in the ' Transfiguration/ and especially 
when I recall how others of his works have affected me, it 
is natural to feel some diffidence in opposing the judgment 
of men whose studies have given them the best means of 
forming that judgment — a diffidence which may keep me 
silent on the matter. To start with the assumption that 
you are right, and all who oppose you are fools, cannot be a 
safe method. ISTor in spite of a conviction that much of 
the admiration expressed for the ( Transfiguration ? is lip- 
homage and tradition, ought the non-admiring to assume 
that all of it is insincere. It is quite compatible with 
modesty to be perfectly independent, and with sincerity to 
be respectful to the opinions and tastes of others. If you 
express any opinion, you are bound to express your real 
opinion; let critics and admirers utter what dithyrambs 
they please. Were this terror of not being thought correct 

1 I have never thoroughly understood the painful anxiety of people to be 
shielded against the dishonouring suspicion of not rightly appreciating pic- 
tures, even when the very phrases they use betray their ignorance and in- 
sensibility. Many will avow their indifference to music, and almost boast 
of their ignorance of science ; will sneer at abstract theories, and profess the 
most tepid interest in history, who would feel it an unpardonable insult if 
you doubted their enthusiasm for painting and the " old masters " (by them 
secretly identified with the brown masters). It is an insincerity fostered 
by general pretence. Each man is afraid to declare his real sentiments in 
the presence of others equally timid. Massive authority overawes genuine 
feeling.— G. H. L. 



The Principle of Sincerity. 97 

in taste once got rid of, how many stereotyped judgments 
on books and pictures would be broken up ! and the result 
of this sincerity would be some really valuable criticism. 
In the presence of Kaphael's ' Sistine Madonna/ Titian's 
6 Peter the Martyr/ or Masaccio's great frescoes in the 
Brancacci Chapel, one feels as if there had been nothing 
written about these mighty works, so little does any eulogy 
discriminate the elements of their profound effects, so little 
have critics expressed their own thoughts and feelings. 
Yet every day some wandering connoisseur stands before 
these pictures, and at once, without waiting to let them 
sink deep into his mind, discovers all the merits which are 
stereotyped in the criticisms, and discovers nothing else. 
He does not wait to feel, he is impatient to range himself 
with men of taste ; he discards all genuine impressions, 
replacing them with vague conceptions of what he is ex- 
pected to see. 

111. Inasmuch as success must be determined by the 
relation between the work and the public, the sincerity 
which leads a man into open revolt against established 
opinions may seem to be an obstacle. Indeed, publishers, 
critics, and friends are always loud in their prophecies 
against originality and independence on this very ground ; 
they do their utmost to stifle every attempt at novelty, 
because they fix their eyes upon a hypothetical public 
taste, and think that only what has already been proved 
successful can again succeed ; forgetting that whatever has 
once been done need not be done over again, and forget- 
ting that what is now commonplace was once originality. 
There are cases in which a disregard of public opinion will 
inevitably call forth opprobrium and neglect ; but there is 
no case in which Sincerity is not strength. If I advance 
new views in Philosophy or Theology, I cannot expect to 
have many adherents among minds altogether unprepared 
for such views 5 yet it is certain that even those who most 



98 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

fiercely oppose me will recognise the power of my voice if 
it is not a mere echo ; and the very novelty will challenge 
attention, and at last gain adherents if my views have any 
real insight. At any rate the point to be considered is this, 
that whether the novel views excite opposition or applause, 
the one condition of their success is that they be believed 
in by the propagator. The public can only be really moved 
by what is genuine. Even an error if believed in will have 
greater force than an insincere truth. Lip-advocacy only 
rouses lip-homage. It is belief which gives momentum. 

112. Nor is it any serious objection to what is here said, 
that insincerity and timid acquiescence in the opinion and 
tastes of the public do often gain applause and temporary 
success. Sanding the sugar is not immediately unprofitable. 
There is an unpleasant popularity given to falsehood in this 
world of ours ; but we love the truth notwithstanding, and 
with a more enduring love. Who does not know what it is 
to listen to public speakers pouring forth expressions of 
hollow belief and sham enthusiasm, snatching at common- 
places with a fervour as of faith, emphasising insincerities 
as if to make up by emphasis what is wanting in feeling, 
all the while saying not only what they do not believe, but 
what the listeners know they do not believe, and what the 
listeners, though they roar assent, do not themselves be- 
lieve — a turbulence of sham, the very noise of which stuns 
the conscience ? Is such an orator really enviable, although 
thunders of applause may have greeted his efforts ? Is 
that success, although the newspapers all over the kingdom 
may be reporting the speech ? What influence remains 
when the noise of the shouts has died away ? Whereas, if 
on the same occasion one man gave utterance to a sincere 
thought, even if it were not a very wise thought, although 
the silence of the public — perhaps its hisses — may have 
produced an impression of failure, yet there is success, for 
the thought will re-appear and mingle with the thoughts of 



The Principle of Sincerity. 99 

men to be adopted or combated by them, and may perhaps 
in a few years mark ont the speaker as a man better worth 
listening to than the noisy orator whose insincerity was so 
mnch cheered. 

113. The same observation applies to books. An anthor 
who waits upon the times, and utters only what he thinks 
the world will like to hear, who sails with the stream, 
admiring everything which it is " correct taste " to admire, 
despising everything which has not yet received that Hall- 
mark, sneering at the thoughts of a great thinker not yet 
accepted as such, and slavishly repeating the small phrases 
of a thinker who has gained renown, flippant and con- 
temptuous towards opinions which he has not taken the 
trouble to understand, and never venturing to oppose even 
the errors of men in authority, such an author may indeed 
by dint of a certain dexterity in assorting the mere husks 
of opinion gain the applause of reviewers, who will call him 
a thinker, and of indolent men and women who will pro- 
nounce him "so clever"; but triumphs of this kind are like 
oratorical triumphs after dinner. Every autumn the earth 
is strewed with the dead leaves of such vernal successes. 

v 
iii. Sincerity as Related to Vision. 

114. I would not have the reader conclude that because 
I advocate plain-speaking even of unpopular views, I mean 
to imply that originality and sincerity are always in opposi- 
tion to public opinion. There are many points both of 
doctrine and feeling in which the world is not likely to be 
wrong. But in all cases it is' desirable that men should not 
pretend to believe opinions which they really reject, or 
express emotions they do not feel. And this rule is uni- 
versal. Even truthful and modest men will sometimes 
violate the rule under the mistaken idea of being eloquent 
by means of the diction of eloquence. This is a source 



100 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

of bad Literature. There are certain views in Keligion, 
Ethics, and Politics, which readily lend themselves to elo- 
quence, because eloquent men have written largely on them, 
and the temptation to secure this facile effect often seduces 
men to advocate these views, in preference to views they 
really see to be more rational. That this eloquence rt 
second-hand is but feeble in its effect, does not restrain 
others from repeating it. Experience never seems to teach 
them that grand speech comes only from grand thoughts, 
passionate speech from passionate emotions. The pomp 
and roll of words, the trick of phrase, the rhythm and the 
gesture of an orator, may all be imitated, but not his 
eloquence. No man was ever eloquent by trying to be elo- 
quent, but only by being so. Trying leads to the vice of 
"fine writing" — the plague-spot of Literature, not only 
unhealthy in itself, and vulgarising the grand language 
which should be reserved for great thoughts, but encour- 
aging that tendency to select only those views upon which 
a spurious enthusiasm can most readily graft the repre- 
sentative abstractions and stirring suggestions which will 
move public applause. The " fine writer " will always pre- 
fer the opinion which is striking to the opinion which is 
true. He frames his sentences by the ear, and is only dis- 
satisfied with them when their cadences are ill-distributed, 
or their diction is too familiar. It seldom occurs to him 
that a sentence should accurately express his meaning and 
no more ; indeed there is not often a definite meaning to be 
expressed, for the thought which arose vanished while he 
tried to express it, and the sentence, instead of being deter- 
mined by and moulded on a thought, is determined by some 
verbal suggestion. Open any book or periodical, and see 
how frequently the writer does not, cannot, mean what he 
says ; and you will observe that in general the defect does 
not arise from any poverty in our language, but from the 
habitual carelessness which allows expressions to be written 



The Principle of Sincerity. 101 

down unchallenged provided they are sufficiently harmoni- 
ous, and not glaringly inadequate. ^ 

115. The slapdash insincerity of modern style entirely 
sets at nought the first principle of writing, which is 
accuracy. The art of writing is not, as many seem to 
imagine, the art of bringing fine phrases into rhythmical 
order, but the art of placing before the reader intelligible 
symbols of the thoughts and feelings in the writer's mind. 
Endeavour to be faithful, and if there is any beauty in your 
thought, your style will be beautiful ; if there is any real 
emotion to express, the expression will be moving. Never 
rouge your style. Trust to your native pallor rather than 
to cosmetics. Try to make us see what you see and to feel 
what you feel, and banish from your mind whatever phrases 
others may have used to express what was in their thoughts, 
but is not in yours. Have you never observed what a 
slight impression writers have produced, in spite of a pro- 
fusion of images, antitheses, witty epigrams, and rolling 
periods, whereas some simpler style, altogether wanting in 
such " brilliant passage/' has gained the attention and 
respect of thousands ? Whatever is stuck on as ornament 
affects us as ornament ; we do not think an old hag young 
and handsome because the jewels flash from her brow 
and bosom ; if we envy her wealth, we do not admire her 
beauty. 

116. What " fine writing " is to prosaists, insincere imagery 
is to poets : it is introduced for effect, not used as expres- 
sion. To the real poet an image comes spontaneously, or 
if it comes as an afterthought, it is chosen because it ex- 
presses his meaning and helps to paint the picture which 
is in his mind, not because it is beautiful in itself. It is a 
symbol, not an ornament. Whether the image rise slowly 
before the mind during the contemplation, or is seen in the 
same flash which discloses the picture, in each case it arises 
by natural association, and is seen, not sought. The inferior 



\S 



102 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

poet is dissatisfied with what he sees, and casts about in 
search after something more striking. He does not wait 
till an image is borne in upon the tide of memory, he seeks 
for an image that will be picturesque ; and being without 
the delicate selective instinct which guides the fine artist, 
he generally chooses something which we feel to be not 
exactly in its right place. He thus — 

11 With gold and silver covers every part, 
And hides with ornament his want of art." * 

117. Be true to your own soul, and do not try to express 
the thought of another. " If some people," says Euskin, 
" really see angels where others see only empty space, let 
them paint the angels : only let not anybody else think he 
can paint an angel too, on any calculated principles of the 
angelic." 2 Unhappily this is precisely what so many will 
attempt, inspired by the success of the angelic painter. 
Nor will the failure of others warn them. 

118. Whatever is sincerely felt or believed, whatever 
forms part of the imaginative experience, and is not simply 
imitation or hearsay, may fitly be given to the world, and 
will always maintain an infinite superiority over imitative 
splendour; because although it by no means follows that 
whatever has formed part of the artist's experience must be 
impressive, or can do without artistic presentation, yet his 
artistic power will always be greater over his own material 
than over another's. Emerson has well remarked that 
" those facts, words, persons, which dwell in a man's memory 
without his being able to say why, remain, because they 

1 " Poets like painters, thus, unskill'd to trace 

The naked nature and the living grace, 
With gold and jewels cover ev'ry part, 
And hide with ornaments their want of art." 

— Pope's ' Essay on Criticism/ 11. 293-296. 

2 < Modern Painters,' IV., Chap. II., Sect. 2. 



The Principle of Sincerity. 103 

have a relation to him not less real for being as yet unappre- 
hended. They are symbols of value to him, as they can 
interpret parts of his consciousness which he would vainly 
seek words for in the conventional images of books and 
other minds. What attracts my attention shall have it, as 
I will go to the man who knocks at my door, while a thou- 
sand persons, as worthy, go by it, to whom I give no regard. 
It is enough that these particulars speak to me. A few 
anecdotes, a few traits of character, manners, face, a few 
incidents have an emphasis in your memory out of all pro- 
portion to their apparent significance, if you measure them 
by the ordinary standards. They relate to your gift. Let 
them have their weight, and do not reject them, and cast 
about for illustrations and facts more usual in literature." 1 

119. In the notes to the last edition of his poems, Words- 
worth specified the particular occasions which furnished 
him with particular images. It was the things he had seen 
which he put into his verses ; and that is why they affect us. 
It matters little whether the poet draws his images directly 
from present experience, or indirectly from memory — 
whether the sight of the slow-sailing swan, that " floats dou- 
ble, swan and shadow " 2 be at once transferred to the scene 
of the poem he is writing, or come back to him in after 
years to complete some picture in his mind ; enough that the 
image be suggested, and not sought. 

120. The sentence from Euskin, quoted just now, will 
guard against the misconception that a writer, because told 
to rely on his own experience, is enjoined to forego the 
glory and delight of creation even of fantastic types. He 
is dnly told never to pretend to see what he has not seen. 

1 Essay on ' Spiritual Laws/ 

« " Let . . . 

The swan on still St. Mary's Lake 
Float double, swan and shadow." 

— ' Yarrow Unvisited. , 



104 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

He is urged to follow Imagination in her most erratic 
course, though like a will-o'-wisp she lead over marsh and 
fen away from the haunts of mortals ; but not to pretend that 
he is following a will-o'-wisp when his vagrant fancy never 
was allured by one. It is idle to paint fairies and goblins 
unless you have a genuine vision of them which forces you 
to paint them. They are poetical objects, but only to poetic 
minds. "Be a plain topographer if you possibly can/' says 
Ruskin, " if Nature meant you to be anything else, she will 
force you to it; but never try to be a prophet; go on quietly 
with your hard camp-work, and the spirit will come to you 
in the camp, as it did to Elclad and Medad, if you are ap- 
pointed to have it." l Yes : if you are appointed to have it ; 
if your faculties are such that this high success is possible, 
it will come, provided the faculties are employed with sin- 
cerity. Otherwise it cannot come. No insincere effort can 
secure it. 

121. If the advice I give to reject every insincerity in 
writing seem cruel, because it robs the writer of so many 
of his effects — if it seem disheartening to earnestly warn 
a man not to try to be eloquent, but only to be eloquent 
when his thoughts move with an impassioned largo — if 
throwing a writer back upon his naked faculty seem espe- 
cially distasteful to those who have a painful misgiving that 
their faculty is small, and that the uttermost of their own 
power would be far from impressive, my answer is that I 
have no hope of dissuading feeble writers from the practice 
of insincerity, but as under no circumstances can they be- 
come good writers and achieve success, my analysis has no 
reference to them, my advice has no aim at them. 

122. It is to the young and strong, to the ambitious and 
the earnest, that my words are addressed. It is to wipe the 
film from their eyes, and make them see, as they will see 

1 ' Modern Painters,' IV., Chap. II., Sect. 4. 



The Principle of Sincerity, 105 

directly the truth is placed before them, how easily we are 
all seduced into greater or less insincerity of thought, of 
feeling, and of style, either by reliance on other writers, 
from whom we catch the trick of thought and turn of 
phrase, or from some preconceived view of what the public 
will prefer. It is to the young and strong I say : Watch 
vigilantly every phrase you write, and assure yourself that 
it expresses what you mean ; watch vigilantly every 
thought you express, and assure yourself that it is yours, 
not another's; you may share it with another, but you 
must not adopt it from him for the nonce. Of course, 
if you are writing humorously or dramatically, you will 
not be expected to write your own serious opinions. Hu- 
mour may take its utmost licence, yet be sincere. The 
dramatic genius may incarnate itself in a hundred shapes, 
yet in each it will speak what it feels to be the truth. If 
you are imaginatively representing the feelings of another, 
as in some playful exaggeration or some dramatic persona- 
tion, the truth required of you is imaginative truth, not 
your personal views and feelings. But when you write in 
your own person you must be rigidly veracious, neither pre- 
tending to admire what you do not admire, or to despise 
what in secret you rather like, nor surcharging your admi- 
ration and enthusiasm to bring you into unison with the 
public chorus. This vigilance may render Literature more 
laborious ; but no one ever supposed that success was to be 
had on easy terms ; and if you only write one sincere page 
where you might have written twenty insincere pages, the 
one page is worth writing — it is Literature. 1 

123. Sincerity is not only effective and honourable, it is 
also much less difficult than is commonly supposed. To 
take a trifling example : If for some reason I cannot, or do 

1 Cf. Ruskin, ' Modern Painters/ Vol. III., Chap. III. ; M. Arnold's essay 
on ' Wordsworth ' ; Emerson's essay on ■ Poetry and Imagination,' the sec- 
tion on ' Veracity.' 



106 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

not, choose to verify a quotation which may be useful to my 
purpose, what is to prevent my saying that the quotation is 
taken at second-hand ? It is true, if my quotations are for 
the most part second-hand and are acknowledged as such, my 
erudition will appear scanty. But it will only appear what it 
is. Why should I pretend to an erudition which is not mine ? 
Sincerity forbids it. Prudence whispers that the pretence 
is, after all, vain, because those, and those alone, who can 
rightly estimate erudition will infallibly detect my pretence, 
whereas those whom I have deceived were not worth deceiv- 
ing. Yet in spite of Sincerity and Prudence, how shame- 
lessly men compile second-hand references, and display in 
borrowed foot-notes a pretence of labour and of accuracy ! 
I mention this merely to show how, even in the humbler 
class of compilers, the Principle of Sincerity may find fit 
illustrations, and how honest work, even in references, be- 
longs to the same category as honest work in philosophy or 
poetry. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE PRINCIPLE OF BEAUTY, 

i. TJie Secret of Style. 

124. It is not enough that a man has clearness of Vision, 
and reliance on Sincerity, he must also have the art of 
Expression, or he will remain obscure. Many have had 

" The visionary eye, the faculty to see 
The thing that hath been as the thing which is," 

but either from native defect, or the mistaken bias of educa- 
tion, have been frustrated in the attempt to give their vis- 
ions beautiful or intelligible shape. The art which could 
give them shape is doubtless intimately dependent on clear- 
ness of eye and sincerity of purpose, but it is also something 
over and above these, and comes from an organic aptitude 
not less special, when possessed with fulness, than the apti- 
tude for music or drawing. Any instructed person can 
write, as any one can learn to draw ; but to write well, to 
express ideas with felicity and force, is not an accomplish- 
ment but a talent. The power of seizing unapparent rela- 
tions of things is not always conjoined with the power of 
selecting the fittest verbal symbols by which they can be 
made apparent to others : the one is the power of the thinker, 
the other the power of the writer. 

125. "Style," says De Qumcey, "has two separate func- 
tions — first, to brighten the intelligibility of a subject which 
is obscure to the understanding; secondly, to regenerate 
the normal power and impressiveness of a subject which 
has become dormant to the sensibilities. . . . Decaying 

107 



</ 



108 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

lineaments are to be retraced, and faded colouring to be 
refreshed." 1 To effect these purposes we require a rich 
verbal memory from which to select the symbols best fitted 
to call up images in the reader's mind, and we also require 
the delicate selective instinct to guide us in the choice and 
arrangement of those symbols, so that the rhythm and 
cadence may agreeably attune the mind, rendering it recep- 
tive to the impressions meant to be communicated. A copi- 
ous verbal memory, like a copious memory of facts, is only 
one source of power, and without the high controlling faculty 
of the artist may lead to diffusive indecision. Just as one 
man, gifted with keen insight, will from a small stock of 
facts extricate unapparent relations to which others, rich in 
knowledge, have been blind ; so will a writer, gifted with 
a fine instinct, select from a narrow range of phrases sym- 
bols of beauty and of power utterly beyond the reach of 
commonplace minds. It is often considered, both by writers 
and readers, that fine language makes fine writers ; yet no 
one supposes that fine colours make a fine painter. The 
copia verborum is often a weakness and a snare. As Arthur 
Helps says, men use several epithets in the hope that one 
of them may fit. But the artist knows which epithet does 
fit, uses that, and rejects the rest. The characteristic weak- 
ness of bad writers is inaccuracy: their symbols do not 
adequately express their ideas. Pause but for a moment 
over their sentences, and you perceive that they are using 
language at random, the choice being guided rather by some 
indistinct association of phrases, or some broken echoes of 
familiar sounds, than by any selection of words to represent 
ideas. I read the other day of the truck system being " ram- 
pant " in a certain district ; and every day we may meet 
with similar echoes of familiar words which betray the flac- 
cid condition of the writer's mind drooping under the labour 
of expression. 

1 Essay on ' Language.' 



• The Principle of Beauty. 109 

126. Except in the rare cases of great dynamic thinkers 
whose thoughts are as turning-points in the history of our 
race, it is by Style that writers gain distinction, by Style 
they secure their immortality. 1 In a lower sphere many 
are remarked as writers although they may lay no claim to 
distinction as thinkers, if they have the faculty of felici- 
tously expressing the ideas of others ; and many who are 
really remarkable as thinkers gain but slight recognition 
from the public, simply because in them the faculty of 
expression is feeble. In proportion as the work passes 
from the sphere of passionless intelligence to that of impas- 
sioned intelligence, from the region of demonstration to the 
region of emotion, the art of Style becomes more complex, 
its necessity more imperious. But even in Philosophy and 
Science the art is both subtle and necessary ; the choice 
and arrangement of the fitting symbols, though less, difficult 
than in Art, is quite indispensable to success. If the dis- 
tinction which I formerly drew 2 between the Scientific and 
the Artistic tendencies be accepted, it will disclose a corre- 
sponding difference in the Style which suits a ratiocinative 
exposition fixing attention on abstract relations, and an 
emotive exposition fixing attention on objects as related to 
the feelings. We do not expect the scientific writer to stir 
our emotions, otherwise than by the secondary influences 
which arise from our awe and delight at the unveiling of 
new truths. In his own researches he should extricate 
himself from the perturbing influences of emotion, and 
consequently he should protect us from such suggestions in 
his exposition. Feeling too often smites intellect with 
blindness, and intellect too often paralyses the free play of 
emotion, not to call for a decisive separation of the two. 

1 " Les ouvrages bien ecrit seront les seuls qui passeront a la posterite: 
la quantite des connaissances, la singularity des faits, ne sont pas de surs 
garants de Pimmortalite." — Buffon, ' Discours sur le Style.' 

2 § 59-75. 



110 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

But this separation is no ground for the disregard of Style 
in works of pure demonstration — as we shall see by-and-by. 

127. The Principle of Beauty is only another name for 
Style, which is an art, incommunicable as are all other arts, 
but like them subordinated to laws founded on psycholog- 
ical conditions. The laws constitute the Philosophy of 
Criticism ; and I shall have to ask the reader's indulgence 
if for the first time I attempt to expound them scientifically 
in the chapter to which the present is only an introduction. 
A knowledge of these laws, even presuming them to be 
accurately expounded, will no more give a writer the power 
of felicitous expression than a knowledge of the laws of 
colour, perspective, and proportion will enable a critic to 
paint a picture. But all good writing must conform to 
these laws ; all bad writing will be found to violate them. 
And the utility of the knowledge will be that of a constant 
monitor, warning the artist of the errors into which he has 
slipped, or into which he may slip if unwarned. 

128. How is it that while every one acknowledges the im- 
portance of Style, and numerous critics from Quinctilian and 
Longinus down to Quarterly Reviewers have written upon 
it, very little has been done towards a satisfactory estab- 
lishment of principles ? Is it not partly because the critics 
have seldom held the true purpose of Style steadily before 
their eyes, and still seldomer justified their canons by de- 
ducing them from psychological conditions ? To my appre- 
hension they seem to have mistaken the real sources of 
influence, and have fastened attention upon some accidental 
or collateral details, instead of tracing the direct connection 
between effects and causes. Misled by the splendour of 
some great renown they have concluded that to write like 
Cicero or to paint like Titian must be the pathway to suc- 
cess ; which is true in one sense, and profoundly false as 
they understand it. One pestilent contagious error issued 
from this misconception, namely, that all maxims confirmed 



The Principle of Beauty. Ill 

by the practice of the great artists must be maxims for the 
art; although a close examination might reveal that the 
practice of these artists may have been the result of their 
peculiar individualities or of the state of culture at their 
epoch. A true Philosophy of Criticism would exhibit in 
how far such maxims were universal, as founded on laws 
of human nature, and in how far adaptations to particular 
individualities. A great talent will discover new methods. 
A great success ought to put us on the track of new prin- 
ciples. But the fundamental laws of Style, resting on the 
truths of human nature, may be illustrated, they cannot be 
guaranteed by any individual success. Moreover, the strong 
individuality of the artist will create special modifications 
of the laws to suit himself, making that excellent or endur- 
able which in other hands would be intolerable. If the 
purpose of Literature be the sincere expression of the 
individual's own ideas and feelings it is obvious that the 
cant about the " best models w tends to pervert and obstruct 
that expression. Unless a man thinks and feels precisely 
after the manner of Cicero and Titian it is manifestly wrong 
for him to express himself in their way. He may study in 
them the principles of effect, and try to surprise some of 
their secrets, but he should resolutely shun all imitation 
of them. They ought to be illustrations not authorities, 
studies not models. 

ii. Imitation of the Classics. 

129. The fallacy about models is seen at once if we ask 
this simple question : Will the practice of a great writer 
justify a solecism in grammar or a confusion in logic? No. 
Then why should it justify any other detail not to be recon- 
ciled with universal truth ? If we are forced to invoke the 
arbitration of reason in the one case, we must do so in the 
other. Unless we set aside the individual practice when- 



112 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

ever it is irreconcilable with general principles, we shall be 
unable to discriminate in a successful work those merits 
which secured from those demerits which accompanied suc- 
cess. Now this is precisely the condition in which Criticism 
has always been. It has been formal instead of being psy- 
chological : it has drawn its maxims from the works of 
successful artists, instead of ascertaining the psychological 
principles involved in the effects of those works. When 
the perplexed dramatist called down curses on the man who 
invented fifth acts, he never thought of escaping from his 
tribulation by writing a play in four acts ; the formal canon 
which made five acts indispensable to a tragedy was drawn 
from the practice of great dramatists, but there was no 
demonstration of any psychological demand on the part of 
the audience for precisely five acts. 1 

130. Although no instructed mind will for a moment 
doubt the immense advantage of the stimulus and culture 
derived from a reverent familiarity with the works of our 
great predecessors and contemporaries, there is a pernicious 
error which has been fostered by many instructed minds, 
rising out of their reverence for greatness and their forget- 
fulness of the ends of Literature. This error is the notion 
of u models," and of fixed canons drawn from the practice 
of great artists. It substitutes Imitation for Invention ; 
reproduction of old types instead of the creation of new. 
There is more bad than good work produced in consequence 

1 English critics are much less pedantic in adherence to " rules " than 
the French, yet when, many years ago, there appeared a tragedy in three 
acts, and without a death, these innovations were considered inadmissible ; 
and if the success of the work had been such as to elicit critical discussion, 
the necessity of five acts and a death would doubtless have been generally 
insisted on. — G. H. L. The nature of this "psychological demand" has 
been pointed out by Freytag ('Technik des Dramas,' pp. 100-120, 168-182, 
esp. p. 170) , who shows that the rive acts correspond in a rough way to the 
five natural stages of dramatic development, — Introduction, Rise, Culmi- 
nation, Fall, and Catastrophe. The three-act tragedy referred to in Lewes's 
note is probably his own play, ' The Noble Heart.' 






The Principle of Beauty. 113 

of the assiduous following of models. And we shall seldom 
be very wide of the mark if in our estimation of youthful 
productions we place more reliance on their departures from 
what has been already done, than on their resemblances to 
the best artists. An energetic crudity, even a riotous 
absurdity, has more promise in it than a clever and elegant 
mediocrity, because it shows that the young man is speak- 
ing out of his own heart, and struggling to express himself 
in his own way rather than in the way he finds in other 
men's books. The early works of original writers are 
usually very bad ; then succeeds a short interval of imita- 
tion in which the influence of some favourite author is dis- 
tinctly traceable; but this does not last long, the native 
independence of the mind reasserts itself, and although 
perhaps academic and critical demands are somewhat disre- 
garded, so that the original writer on account of his very 
originality receives but slight recognition from the authori- 
ties, nevertheless if there is any real . power in the voice it 
soon makes itself felt in the world. There is one word of 
counsel I would give to young authors, which is that they 
should be humbly obedient to the truth proclaimed by their 
own souls, and haughtily indifferent to the remonstrances 
of critics founded solely on any departure from the truths 
expressed by others. It by no means follows that because 
a work is unlike works that have gone before it, therefore 
it is excellent or even tolerable ; it may be original in error 
or in ugliness ; but one thing is certain, that in proportion 
to its close fidelity to the matter and manner of existing 
works will be its intrinsic worthlessness. And one of the 
severest assaults on the fortitude of an unacknowledged 
writer comes from the knowledge that his critics, with rare 
exceptions, will judge his work in reference to pre-existing 
models, and not in reference to the ends of Literature and 
the laws of human nature. He knows that he will be com- 
pared with artists whom he ought not to resemble if his 



114 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

work have truth and originality ; and finds himself teased 
with disparaging remarks which are really compliments in 
their objections. He can comfort himself by his trust in 
truth and the sincerity of his own work. He may also 
draw strength from the reflection that the public and pos- 
terity may cordially appreciate the work in which consti- 
tuted authorities see nothing but failure. The history of 
Literature abounds in examples of critics being entirely at 
fault — missing the old familiar landmarks, these guides at 
once set up a shout of warning that the path has been 
missed. 1 

131. Very noticeable is the fact that of the thousands 
who have devoted years to the study of the classics, espe- 
cially to the " niceties of phrase " and "chastity of compo- 
sition," so much prized in these classics, very few have 
learned to write with felicity, and not many with accuracy. 
Native incompetence has doubtless largely influenced this 
result in men who are insensible to the nicer shades of dis- 
tinction in terms, and want the subtle sense of congruity ; 
but the false plan of studying " models " without clearly 
understanding the psychological conditions which the effects 
involve, without seeing why great writing is effective and 
where it is merely individual expression, has injured even 
vigorous minds and paralysed the weak. From a similar 
mistake hundreds have deceived themselves in trying to 
catch the trick of phrase peculiar to some distinguished 
contemporary. In vain do they imitate the Latinisms and 
antitheses of Johnson, the epigrammatic sentences of Macau- 
lay, the colloquial ease of Thackeray, the cumulative pomp 
of Milton, the diffusive play of De Quincey : a few friendly 
or ignorant reviewers may applaud it as " brilliant writing," 
but the public remains unmoved. It is imitation, and as 
such it is lifeless. 

1 Cf. Lewes's article in British and Foreign Review, Vol. 13, pp. 36-37. 



The Principle of Beauty. 115 

132. We see at once the mistake directly we understand 
that a genuine style is the living body of thought, not a 
costume that can be put on and off ; it is the expression of 
the writer's mind; it is not less the incarnation of his 
thoughts in verbal symbols than a picture is the painter's 
incarnation of his thoughts in symbols of form and colour. 1 
A man may, if it please him, dress his thoughts in the 
tawdry splendour of a masquerade. But this is no more 
Literature than the masquerade is Life. 

133. No Style can be good that is not sincere. It must 
be the expression of its author's mind. There are, of 
course, certain elements of composition which must be mas- 
tered as a dancer learns his steps, but the style of the 
writer, like the grace of the dancer, is only made effective 
by such mastery ; it springs from a deeper source. Initia- 
tion into the rules of construction will save us from some 
gross errors of composition, but it will not make a style. 
Still less will imitation of another's manner make one. In 
our day there are many who imitate Macaulay's short sen- 
tences, iterations, antitheses, geographical and historical 
illustrations, and eighteenth century diction, but who 
accepts them as Macaulays ? They cannot seize the secret 
of his charm, because that charm lies in the felicity of his 
talent, not in the structure of his sentences ; in the fulness 
of his knowledge, not in the character of his illustrations. 
Other men aim at ease and vigour by discarding Latinisms," 
and admitting colloquialisms ; but vigour and ease are not 
to be had on recipe. ]STo study of models, no attention to 
rules, will give the easy turn, the graceful phrase, the 
simple word, the fervid movement, or the large clearness ; a 
picturesque talent will express itself in concrete images ; 
a genial nature will smile in pleasant turns and innuendoes ; 
a rapid, unhesitating, imperious mind will deliver its quick 

1 Cf. De Quincey's essay on ' Language,' the closing paragraphs. 



116 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

incisive phrases ; a full deliberating mind will overflow in 
ample paragraphs laden with the weight of parentheses and 
qualifying suggestions. The style which is good in one 
case would be vicious in another. The broken rhythm 
which increases the energy of one style would ruin the largo 
of another. Both are excellencies where both are natural. 

134, We are always disagreeably impressed by an obvi- 
ous imitation of the manner of another, because we feel it 
to be an insincerity, and also because it withdraws our 
attention from the thing said, to the way of saying it. And 
here lies the great lesson writers have to learn — namely, 
that they should think of the immediate purpose of their 
writing, which is to convey truths and emotions, in symbols 
and images, intelligible and suggestive. The racket-player 
keeps his eye on the ball he is to strike, not on the racket 
with which he strikes. If the writer sees vividly, and will 
say honestly what he sees, and how he sees it, he may want 
something of the grace and felicity of other men, but he 
will have all the strength and felicity with which nature 
has endowed him. More than that he cannot attain, and 
he will fall very short of it in snatching at the grace which 
is another's. Do what he will, he cannot escape from the 
infirmities of his own mind : the affectation, arrogance, os- 
tentation, hesitation, native in the man will taint his style, 
no matter how closely he may copy the manner of another. 
For evil and for good, le style est cle Vhomme meme. 1 

135. The French critics, who are singularly servile to all 
established reputations, and whose unreasoning idolatry of 
their own classics is one of the reasons why their Literature 
is not richer, are fond of declaring with magisterial empha- 
sis that the rules of good taste and the canons of style 

1 Buff on, ' Discours sur le Style.' The passage is commonly misquoted, 
" le style c'est l'homme meme." For a discussion of its meaning, see 'Mod- 
ern Language Notes,' Vol. V., pp. 179-180, and Lewes's ' History of Philoso- 
phy,' chapter on Hobbes, note. 



The Principle of Beauty. 117 

were fixed once and for ever by their great writers in the 
seventeenth century. The true ambition of every modern 
is said to be by careful study of these models to approach 
(though with no hope of equalling) their chastity and ele- 
gance. That a writer of the nineteenth century should 
express himself in the manner which was admirable in the 
seventeenth is an absurdity which needs only to be stated. 
It is not worth refuting. But it never presents itself thus 
to the French. In their minds it is a lingering remnant of 
that older superstition which believed the Ancients to have 
discovered all wisdom, so that if we could only surprise the 
secret of Aristotle's thoughts and clearly comprehend the 
drift of Plato's theories (which unhappily was not clear) 
we should compass all knowledge. How long this supersti- 
tion lasted cannot accurately be settled ; perhaps it is not 
quite extinct even yet ; but we know how little the most 
earnest students succeeded in surprising the secrets of the 
universe by reading Greek treatises, and how much by 
studying the universe itself. Advancing Science daily dis- 
credits the superstition; yet the advance of Criticism has 
not yet wholly discredited the parallel superstition in Art. 
The earliest thinkers are no longer considered the wisest, 
but the earliest artists are still proclaimed the finest. Even 
those who do not believe in this superiority are, for the 
most part, overawed by tradition and dare not openly ques- 
tion the supremacy of works which in their private convic- 
tions hold a very subordinate rank. And this reserve is 
encouraged by the intemperate scorn of those who question 
the supremacy without having the knowledge or the sym- 
pathy which could fairly appreciate the earlier artists. 
Attacks on the classics by men ignorant of the classical 
languages tend to perpetuate the superstition. 

136. But be the merit of the classics, ancient and modern, 
what it may, no writer can become a classic by imitating 
them. The principle of Sincerity here ministers to the 



118 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

principle of Beauty by forbidding imitation and enforcing 
rivalry. Write what you can, and if you have the grace of 
felicitous expression or the power of energetic expression 
your style will be admirable and admired. At any rate see 
that it be your own, and not another's ; on no other terms 
will the world listen to it. You cannot be eloquent by 
borrowing from the opulence of another; you cannot be 
humorous by mimicking the whims of another ; what was a 
pleasant smile dimpling his features becomes a grimace on 
yours. 

137. It will not be supposed that I would have the great 
writers disregarded, as if nothing were to be learned from 
them ; but the study of great writers should be the study 
of general principles as illustrated or revealed in these 
writers ; and if properly pursued it will of itself lead to a 
condemnation of the notion of models. What we may learn 
from them is a nice discrimination of the symbols which in- 
telligibly express the shades of meaning and kindle emo- 
tion. The writer wishes to give his thoughts a literary 
form. This is for others, not for himself ; consequently he 
must, before all things, desire to be intelligible, and to be 
so he must adapt his expressions to the mental condition of 
his audience. If he employs arbitrary symbols, such as old 
words in new and unexpected senses, he may be clear as 
daylight to himself, but to others, dark as fog. And the 
difficulty of original writing lies in this, that what is new 
and individual must find expression in old symbols. This 
difficulty can only be mastered by a peculiar talent, 
strengthened and rendered nimble by practice, and the 
commerce with original minds. Great writers should be 
our companions if we would learn to write greatly; but 
no familiarity with their manner will supply the place of 
native endowment. Writers are born, no less than poets, 
and like poets, they learn to make their native gifts effec- 
tive. Practice, aiding their vigilant sensibility, teaches 



The Principle of Beauty. 119 

them, perhaps unconsciously, certain methods of effective 
presentation, how one arrangement of words carries with it 
more power than another, how familiar and concrete ex- 
pressions are demanded in one place, and in another place 
abstract expressions unclogged with disturbing suggestions. 
Every author thus silently amasses a store of empirical 
rules, furnished by his own practice, and confirmed by the 
practice of others. A true Philosophy of Criticism would 
reduce these empirical rules to science by ranging them 
under psychological laws, thus demonstrating the validity 
of the rules, not in virtue of their having been employed by 
Cicero or Addison, by Burke or Sydney Smith, but in virtue 
of their conformity with the constancies of human nature. 

iii. Style in Philosophical and Scientific Literature. 

138. The importance of Style is generally unsuspected 
by philosophers and men of science, who are quite aware of 
its advantage in all departments of belles lettres; and if you 
allude in their presence to the deplorably defective pre- 
sentation of the ideas in some work distinguished for its 
learning, its profundity or its novelty, it is probable that 
you will be despised as a frivolous setter up of manner 
over matter, a light-minded dilettante, unfitted for the sim- 
ple austerities of science. But this is itself a light-minded 
contempt ; a deeper insight would change the tone, and help 
to remove the disgraceful slovenliness and feebleness of com- 
position which deface the majority of grave works, except 
those written by Frenchmen, who have been taught that 
composition is an art, and that no writer may neglect it. 
In England and Germany, men who will spare no labour in 
research, grudge all labour in style ; a morning is cheerfully 
devoted to verifying a quotation, by one who will not spare 
ten minutes to reconstruct a clumsy sentence ; a reference 
is sought with ardour, an appropriate expression in lieu of 



120 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

the inexact phrase which first suggests itself does not seem 
worth seeking. What are we to say to a man who spends 
a quarter's income on a diamond pin which he sticks in 
a greasy cravat? a man who calls public attention on 
him, and appears in a slovenly undress ? Am I to bestow 
applause on some insignificant parade of erudition, and 
withhold blame from the stupidities of style which sur- 
round it ? 

139. Had there been a clear understanding of Style as 
the living body of thought, and not its "dress," which 
might be more or less ornamental, the error I am noticing 
would not have spread so widely. But, naturally, when 
men regarded the grace of style as mere grace of manner, 
and not as the delicate precision giving form and relief to 
matter — as mere ornament, stuck on to arrest incurious 
eyes, and not as effective expression — their sense of the 
deeper value of matter made them despise such aid. A 
clearer conception would have rectified this error. The 
matter is confluent with the manner ; and only through the 
style can thought reach the reader's mind. If the manner 
is involved, awkward, abrupt, obscure, the reader will either 
be oppressed with a confused sense of cumbrous material 
which awaits an artist to give it shape, or he will have the 
labour thrown upon him of extricating the material and 
reshaping it in his own mind. 

140. How entirely men misconceive the relation of style 
to thought may be seen in the replies they make when 
their writing is objected to, or in the ludicrous attempts of 
clumsy playfulness and tawdry eloquence when they wish 
to be regarded as writers. 

" Le style le moms noble a pourtant sa noblesse," 1 

and the principle of Sincerity, not less than the suggestions 
of taste, will preserve the integrity of each style. A phi- 

i Boileau, ' L' Art poetique,' I., 1. 80. 



The Principle of Beauty. 121 

losopher, an investigator, an historian, or a moralist so far 
from being required to present the graces of a wit, an 
essayist, a pamphleteer, or a novelist, would be warned off 
such ground by the necessity of expressing himself sin- 
cerely. Pascal, Biot, Buffon, or Laplace are examples of 
the clearness and beauty with which ideas may be pre- 
sented wearing all the graces of fine literature, and losing 
none of the severity of science. Bacon, also, having an 
opulent and active intellect, spontaneously expressed him- 
self in forms of various excellence. But what a pitiable 
contrast is presented by Kant ! It is true that Kant having 
a much narrower range of sensibility could have no such 
ample resource of expression, and he was wise in not at- 
tempting to rival the splendour of the i Novum Organum ' ; 
but he was not simply unwise, he was extremely culpable in 
sending forth his thoughts as so much raw material which 
the public was invited to put into shape as it could. Had 
he been aware that much of his bad writing was imperfect 
thinking, and always imperfect adaptation of means to ends, 
he might have been induced to recast it into more logical 
and more intelligible sentences, which would have stimulated 
the reader's mind as much as 'they now oppress it. Nor had 
Kant the excuse of a subject too abstruse for clear presenta- 
tion. The examples of Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, and 
Hume are enough to show how such subjects can be mas- 
tered, and the very implication of writing a book is that 
the writer has mastered his material and can give it intelli- 
gible form. 1 

141. A grave treatise, dealing with a narrow range of 
subjects or moving amid severe abstractions, demands a 
gravity and severity of style which is dissimilar to that 
demanded by subjects of a wider scope or more impassioned 
impulse; but abstract philosophy has its appropriate ele- 

1 Cf. De Quincey's essay on ' Style,' Part I., on ' Rhetoric,' and on 
* Language.' 



122 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

gance no less than mathematics. I do not mean that each 
subject should necessarily be confined to one special mode 
of treatment, in the sense which was understood when peo- 
ple spoke of the " dignity of- history," and so forth. The 
style must express the writer's mind; and as variously 
constituted minds will treat one and the same subject, 
there will be varieties in their styles. If a severe thinker 
be also a man of wit, like Bacon, Hobbes, Pascal, or 
Galileo, the wit will flash its sudden illuminations on 
the argument ; but if he be not a man of wit, and conde- 
scends to jest under the impression that by jesting he is 
giving an airy grace to his argument, we resent it as an 
impertinence. 

iv. Style in the Sense of Treatment 

142. I have throughout used Style in the narrower sense 
of expression rather than in the wider sense of " treatment " 
which is sometimes affixed to it. The mode of treating a 
subject is also no doubt the writer's or the artist's way of 
expressing what is in his mind, but this is Style in the more 
general sense, and does not admit of being reduced to laws 
apart from those of Vision and Sincerity. A man neces- 
sarily sees a subject in a particular light — ideal or gro- 
tesque, familiar or fanciful, tragic or humorous. He may 
wander into fairy-land, or move amid representative abstrac- 
tions ; he may follow his wayward fancy in its grotesque 
combinations, or he may settle down amid the homeliest 
details of daily life. But having chosen he must be true to 
his choice. He is not allowed to represent fairy-land as if 
it resembled Walworth, nor to paint Walworth in the col- 
ours of Venice. The truth of consistency must be preserved 
in his treatment, truth in art meaning of course only truth 
within the limits of the art ; thus the painter may produce 
the utmost relief he can by means of light and shade, but it 



The Principle of Beauty. 123 

is peremptorily forbidden to use actual solidities on a 
plane surface. He must represent gold by colour, not by 
sticking gold on his figures. 1 Our applause is greatly de- 
termined by our sense of difficulty overcome, and to stick 
gold on a picture is an avoidance of the difficulty of paint- 
ing it. 

143. Truth of presentation has an inexplicable charm 
for us, and throws a halo around even ignoble objects. A 
policeman idly standing at the corner of the street, or a sow 
lazily sleeping against the sun, are not in nature objects to 
excite a thrill of delight, but a painter may, by the cunning 
of his art, represent them so as to delight every spectator. 
The same objects represented by an inferior painter will 
move only a languid interest ; by a still more inferior 
painter they may be represented so as to please none but the 
most uncultivated eye. Each spectator is charmed in pro- 
portion to his recognition of a triumph over difficulty which 
is measured by the degree of verisimilitude. The degrees 
are many. In the lowest the pictured object is so remote 
from the reality that we simply recognise what the artist 
meant to represent. In like manner we recognise in poor 
novels and dramas what the authors mean to be characters, 
rather than what our experience of life suggests as charac- 
teristic. 

144. Not only do we apportion our applause according to 
the degree of verisimilitude attained, but also according to 
the difficulty each involves. It is a higher difficulty, and 
implies a nobler art to represent the movement and com- 
plexity of life and emotion than to catch the fixed linea- 
ments of outward aspect. To paint a policeman idly loung- 

1 This was done with naivete by the early painters, and is really very 
effective in the pictures of Gentile da Fabriano — that Paul Veronese of the 
fifteenth century — as the reader will confess if he has seen the ' Adoration 
of the Magi,' in the Florence Academy; but it could not be tolerated 
now. ^G. H. L. 



12-4 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

ing at the street corner with such verisimilitude that we are 
pleased with the representation, admiring the solidity of the 
figure, the texture of the clothes, and the human aspect of 
the features, is so difficult that we loudly applaud the skill 
which enables an artist to imitate what in itself is uninter- 
esting ; and if the imitation be carried to a certain degree of 
verisimilitude the picture may be of immense value. But 
no excellence of representation can make this high art. To 
carry it into the region of high art, another and far greater 
difficulty must be overcome ; the man must be represented 
under the strain of great emotion, and we must recognise an 
equal truthfulness in the subtle indications of great mental 
agitation, the fleeting characters of which are far less easy 
to observe and to reproduce, than the stationary characters 
of form and costume. We may often observe how the nov- 
elist or dramatist has tolerable success so long as his per- 
sonages are quiet, or moved only by the vulgar motives of 
ordinary life, and how fatally uninteresting, because unreal, 
these very personages become as soon as they are exhibited 
under the stress of emotion : their language ceases at once 
to be truthful, and becomes stagey; their conduct is no 
longer recognisable as that of human beings such as we have 
known. Here we note a defect of treatment, a mingling of 
styles, arising partly from defect of vision, and partly from 
an imperfect sincerity ; and success in art will always be 
found dependent on integrity of style. The Dutch painters, 
so admirable in their own style, would become pitiable on 
quitting it for a higher. 

145. But I need not enter at any length upon this sub- 
ject of treatment. Obviously a work must have charm or 
it cannot succeed ; and the charm will depend on very 
complex conditions in the artist's mind. What treatment 
is in Art, composition is in Philosophy. The general con- 
ception of the point of view, and the skilful distribution of 
the masses, so as to secure the due preparation, develop- 



The Principle of Beauty. 125 

ment, and culmination, without wasteful prodigality or 
confusing want of symmetry, constitute Composition, 
which is to the structure of a treatise what Style — in 
the narrower sense — is to the structure of sentences. 
How far Style is reducible to law will be examined in 
the next chapter. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE LAWS OF STYLE, 
i. Method of Inquiry, 

146. From what was said in the preceding chapter, the 
reader will understand that our present inquiry is only into 
the laws which regulate the mechanism of Style. In such 
an analysis all that constitutes the individuality, the life, 
the charm of a great writer, must escape. But we may 
dissect Style, as we dissect an organism, and lay bare the 
fundamental laws by which each is regulated. And this 
analogy may indicate the utility of our attempt ; the grace 
and luminousness of a happy talent will no more be acquired 
by a knowledge of these laws, than the force and elasticity 
of a healthy organism will be given by a knowledge of 
anatomy ; but the mistakes in Style, and the diseases of 
the organism, may be often avoided, and sometimes reme- 
died, by such knowledge. 

147. On a subject like this, which has for many years 
engaged the researches of many minds, I shall not be ex- 
pected to bring forward discoveries ; indeed, novelty would 
not unjustly be suspected of fallacy. The only claim my 
exposition can have on the reader's attention is that of 
being an attempt to systematise what has been hitherto 
either empirical observation, or the establishment of critical 
rules on a false basis. I know but of one exception to this 
sweeping censure, and that is the essay on the ' Philosophy 
of Style/ by Mr. Herbert Spencer, 1 where for the first time, 

1 Spencer's essay first appeared in the Westminster Review for October, 
1852. It has been republished in ' Essays : Scientific, Political, and Specu- 

126 



The Laws of Style. 127 

I believe, the right method was pursued of seeking in 
psychological conditions for the true laws of expression. 

148. The aims of Literature being instruction and de- 
light, Style must in varying degrees appeal to our intellect 
and our sensibilities : sometimes reaching the intellect 
through the presentation of simple ideas, and at others 
through the agitating influence of emotions; sometimes 
awakening the sensibilities through the reflexes of ideas, 
and sometimes through a direct appeal. A truth may be 
nakedly expressed so as to stir the intellect alone; or it 
may be expressed in terms which, without disturbing its 
clearness, may appeal to our sensibility by their harmony 
or energy. It is not possible to distinguish the combined 
influences of clearness, movement, and harmony, so as to 
assign to each its relative effect; and if in the ensuing 
pages one law is isolated from another, this must be under- 
stood as an artifice inevitable in such investigations. 

149. There are five laws under which all the conditions of Style 
may be grouped : — 

1. The Law of Economy. 

2. The Law of Simplicity. 

3. The Law of Sequence. 

4. The Law of Climax. 

5. The Law of Variety. 

150. It would be easy to reduce these five to three, and 
range all considerations under Economy, Climax, and Variety ; 
or we might amplify the divisions ; but there are reasons 
of convenience as well as symmetry which give a preference 
to the five. I had arranged them thus for convenience 
some years ago, and I now find they express the equiva- 



lative,' in 'Essays: Moral, Political, and iEsthetic,' and as a separate vol- 
ume. It is also inserted in Boyd's edition of Lord Karnes's ' Elements of 
Criticism.' The Principle of Economy, first enunciated in this essay, has 
been commonly accepted by rhetoricians as a genuine contribution to the 
theory of Style. 



128 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

lence of the two great factors of Style — Intelligence and 
Sensibility. Two out of the five, Economy and Simplicity, 
more specially derive their significance from intellectual 
needs; another two, Climax and Variety, from emotional 
needs ; and between these is the Law of Sequence, which is 
intermediate in its nature, and may be claimed with equal 
justice by both. The laws of force and the laws of pleasure 
can only be provisionally isolated in our inquiry ; in style 
they are blended. The following brief estimate of each 
considers it as an isolated principle undetermined by any 
other. 

ii. The Law of Economy. 

151. Our inquiry is scientific, not empirical ; it therefore 
seeks the psychological basis for every law, endeavouring 
to ascertain what condition of a reader's receptivity de- 
termines the law. Fortunately for us, in the case of the 
first and most important law the psychological basis is 
extremely simple, and may be easily appreciated by a 
reference to its analogue in Mechanics. 

152. What is the first object of a machine ? * Effective 
work — vis viva. Every means by which friction can be 
reduced, and the force thus economised be rendered availa- 
ble, necessarily solicits the constructor's care. He seeks 
as far as possible to liberate the motion which is absorbed 
in the working of the machine, and to use it as vis viva. 
He knows that every superfluous detail, every retarding 
influence, is at the cost of so much power, and is a mechani- 
cal defect though it may perhaps be an aesthetic beauty or 
a practical convenience. He may retain it because of the 
beauty, because of the convenience, but he knows the price 
of effective power at which it is obtained. 

1 The substance of this paragraph and the following one is taken directly 
from Spencer's essay. 



The Laws of Style. 129 

153. And thus it stands with Style. The first object of 
a writer is effective expression, the power of communicating 
distinct thoughts and emotional suggestions. He has to 
overcome the friction of ignorance and pre-occupation. He * 
has to arrest a wandering attention, and to clear away the 
misconceptions which cling around verbal symbols. Words 
are not like iron and wood, coal and water, invariable in 
their properties, calculable in their effects. They are 
mutable in their powers, deriving force and subtle variations 
of force from very trifling changes of position ; colouring 
and coloured by the words which precede and succeed; 
significant or insignificant from the powers of rhythm and 
cadence. It is the writer's art so to arrange words that 
they shall suffer the least possible retardation from the 
inevitable friction of the reader's mind. The analogy of a 
machine is perfect. In both cases the object is to secure 
the maximum of disposable force, by diminishing the amount 
absorbed in the working. Obviously, if a reader is engaged 
in extricating the meaning from a sentence which ought to 
have reflected its meaning as in a mirror, the mental energy 
thus employed is abstracted from the amount of force which 
he has to bestow on the subject ; he has mentally to form 
anew the sentence which has been clumsily formed by the 
writer; he wastes, on interpretation of the symbols, force 
which might have been concentrated on meditation of the 
propositions. This waste is inappreciable in writing of 
ordinary excellence, and on subjects not severely tasking to 
the attention ; but if inappreciable, it is always waste ; and 
in bad writing, especially on topics of philosophy and 
science, the waste is important. And it is this which 
greatly narrows the circle for serious works. Interest in 
the subjects treated of may not be wanting; but the abun- 
dant energy is wanting which to the fatigue of consecutive 
thinking will add the labour of deciphering the language. 
Many of us are but too familiar with the fatigue of recon- 



130 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

structing unwieldy sentences in which the clauses are not 
logically dependent, nor the terms free from equivoque; 
we know what it is to have to hunt for the meaning hidden 
in a maze of words ; and we can understand the yawning 
indifference which must soon settle upon every reader of 
such writing, unless he has some strong external impulse or 
abundant energy. 

154. Economy dictates that the meaning should be presented in 
a form which claims the least possible attention to itself as form, 
unless when that form is part of the writer's object, and when the 
simple thought is less important than the manner of presenting it. 
And even when the manner is playful or impassioned, the 
law of Economy still presides, and insists on the rejection 
of whatever is superfluous. Only a delicate susceptibility 
can discriminate a superfluity in passages of humour or 
rhetoric ; but elsewhere a very ordinary understanding can 
recognise the clauses and the epithets which are out of 
place, and in excess, retarding or confusing the direct appre- 
ciation of the thought. If we have written a clumsy or 
confused sentence, we shall often find that the removal of 
an awkward inversion liberates the idea, or that the modi- 
fication of a cadence increases the effect. This is sometimes 
strikingly seen at the rehearsal of a play : a passage which 
has fallen flat upon the ear is suddenly brightened into 
effectiveness by the removal of a superfluous phrase, which, 
by its retarding influence, had thwarted the declamatory 
crescendo. 

155. Young writers may learn something of the secrets 
of Economy by careful revision of their own compositions, 
and by careful dissection of passages selected both from 
good and bad writers. They have simply to strike out every 
word, every clause, and every sentence, the removal of 
which will not carry away any of the constituent elements 
of the thought. Having done this, let them compare the 
revised with the unrevised passages, and see where the 



The Laivs of Style. 131 

excision has improved, and where it has injured, the effect. 
For Economy, although a primal law, is not the only law 
of Style. It is subject to various limitations from the press- 
ure of other laws ; and thus the removal of a trifling super- 
fluity will not be justified by a wise economy if that loss 
entails a dissonance, or prevents a climax, or robs the 
expression of its ease and variety. Economy is rejection 
of whatever is superfluous ; it is not Miserliness. A liberal 
expenditure is often the best economy, and is always so^/ 
when dictated by a generous impulse, not by a prodigal 
carelessness or ostentatious vanity. That man would greatly 
err who tried to make his style effective by stripping it of 
all redundancy and ornament, presenting it naked before 
the indifferent public. Perhaps the very redundancy which 
he lops away might have aided the reader to see the thought 
more clearly, because it would have kept the thought a 
little longer before his mind, and thus prevented him from 
hurrying on to the next while this one was still imperfectly 
conceived. 

156. As a general rule, redundancy is injurious ; and the 
reason of the rule will enable us to discriminate when 
redundancy is injurious and when beneficial. It is injurious 
when it hampers the rapid movement of the reader's mind, 
diverting his attention to some collateral detail. But it is 
beneficial when its retarding influence is such as only to 
detain the mind longer on the thought, and thus to secure 
the fuller effect of the thought. Eor rapid reading is often 
imperfect reading. The mind is satisfied with a glimpse of 
that which it ought to have steadily contemplated ; and any 
artifice by which the thought can be kept long enough 
before the mind, may indeed be a redundancy as regards 
the meaning, but is an economy of power. Thus we see 
that the phrase or the clause which we might be tempted 
to lop away because it threw no light upon the proposition, 
would be retained by a skilful writer because it added 



132 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

power. You may know the character of a redundancy by 
this one test : does it divert the attention, or simply retard 
it ? The former is always a loss of power ; the latter is 
sometimes a gain of power. The art of the writer consists 
in rejecting all redundancies that do not conduce to clear- 
ness. The shortest sentences are not necessarily the clear- 
est. Concision gives energy, but it also adds restraint. 
The labour of expanding a terse sentence to its full meaning 
is often greater than the labour of picking out the meaning 
from a diffuse and loitering passage. Tacitus is more tire- 
some than Cicero. 

157. There are occasions when the simplest and fewest 
words surpass in effect all the wealth of rhetorical ampli- 
fication. An example may be seen in the passage which 
has been a favourite illustration from the days of Longinus 1 
to our own. " God said : Let there be light ! and there 
was light." This is a conception of power so calm and 
simple that it needs only to be presented in the fewest 
and the plainest words, and would be confused or weak- 
ened by any suggestion of accessories. Let us amplify 
the expressions in the redundant style of miscalled elo- 
quent writers : " God, in the magnificent fulness of crea- 
tive energy, exclaimed : Let there be light ! and lo ! the 
agitating fiat immediately went forth, and thus in one 
indivisible moment the whole universe was illumined." 
We have here a sentence which I am certain many a 
writer would, in secret, prefer to the masterly plainness 

1 " The Sublime is an image reflected from the inward greatness of the 
soul. Hence it comes to pass that a naked thought without words chal- 
lenges admiration and strikes by its grandeur. Such is the silence of Ajax 
in the ' Odyssey,' which is undoubtedly noble, and far above expression. . . . 
So likewise the Jewish legislator, no ordinary person, having conceived a 
just idea of the power of God, has nobly expressed it in the beginning of 
his law. 'And God said, — what? — Let there be light, and there was 
light. Let the earth be, and the earth was.' " — Longinus, ' On the Sublime,' 
Sect. IX., Smith's Translation. 



The Laws of Style. 133 

of Genesis. It is not a sentence which would have capti- 
vated critics. 1 

158. Although this sentence from Genesis is sublime in 
its simplicity, we are not to conclude that simple sentences 
are uniformly the best, or that a style composed of proposi- 
tions briefly expressed would obey a wise Economy. The 
reader's pleasure musb not be forgotten ; and he cannot be 
pleased by a style which always leaps and never flows. A 
harsh, abrupt, and dislocated manner irritates and perplexes 
him by its sudden jerks. It is easier to write short sen- 
tences than to read them. An easy, fluent, and harmonious 
phrase steals unobtrusively upon the mind, and allows the 
thought to expand quietly like an opening flower. 2 But the 
very suasiveness of harmonious writing needs to be varied 
lest it become a drowsy monotony ; and the sharp, short sen- 
tences which are intolerable when abundant, when used 
sparingly act like a trumpet-call to the drooping atten- 
tion. 

iii. The Law of Simplicity. 

159. The first obligation of Economy is that of using the 
fewest words to secure the fullest effect. It rejects what- 
ever is superfluous ; but the question of superfluity must, as 
I showed just now, be determined in each individual case 
by various conditions too complex and numerous to be 
reduced within a formula. The same may be said of 
Simplicity, which is indeed so intimately allied with 
Economy that I have only given it a separate station for 
purposes of convenience. The psychological basis is the 

1 " I am rather proud of the short sentence in the ' Harbours of England,' 
describing a great breaker against rock, — ' One moment a flint cave, — the 
next a marble pillar, — the next, a fading cloud.' " — Ruskin, notes to Vol. I. 
of ' Modern Painters.' 

2 This and the two preceding sentences are obviously intended to furnish 
illustrations of the styles that they describe. 



131 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

same for both. The desire for simplicity is impatience at 
superfluity, and the impatience arises from a sense of hin- 
drance. 

±60. The first obligation of Simplicity is that of using the sim- 
plest means to secure the fullest effect. But although the mind 
instinctively rejects all needless complexity, we shall greatly 
err if we fail to recognise the fact, that what the mind 
recoils from is not the complexity, but the needlessness. 
When two men are set to the work of one, there is a waste 
of means ; when two phrases are used to express one mean- 
ing twice, there is a waste of power ; when incidents are 
multiplied and illustrations crowded without increase of 
illumination, there is prodigality which only the vulgar can 
mistake for opulence. Simplicity is a relative term. If in 
sketching the head of a man the artist wishes only to convey 
the general characteristics of that head, the fewest touches 
show the greatest power, selecting as they do only those 
details which carry with them characteristic significance. 
The means are simple, as the effect is simple. But if, 
besides the general characteristics, he wishes to convey the 
modelling of the forms, the play of light and shade, the tex- 
tures, and the very complex effect of a human head, he must 
use more complex means. The simplicity which was ade- 
quate in the one case becomes totally inadequate in the 
other. 

161. Obvious as this is, it has not been sufficiently pres- 
ent to the mind of critics who have called for plain, famil- 
iar, and concrete diction, as if that alone could claim to be 
simple ; who have demanded a style unadorned by the arti- 
fices of involution, cadence, imagery, and epigram, as if 
Simplicity were incompatible with these ; and have praised 
meagreness, mistaking it for Simplicity. Saxon words are 
words which in their homeliness have deep-seated power, 
and in some places they are the simplest because the most 
powerful words we can employ ; but their very homeliness 



The Laivs of Style. 135 

excludes them from certain places where their very power 
of suggestion is a disturbance of the general effect. The 
selective instinct of the artist tells him when his language 
should be homely, and when it should be more elevated; 
and it is precisely in the imperceptible blending of the 
plain with the ornate that a great writer is distinguished. 
He uses the simplest phrases without triviality, and the 
grandest without a suggestion of grandiloquence. 

162. Simplicity of Style will therefore be understood as 
meaning absence of needless superfluity : 

" Without o'erflowing full." * 

Its plainness is never meagreness, but unity. Obedient to 
the primary impulse of adequate expression, the style of a 
complex subject should be complex; of a technical subject, 
technical; of an abstract subject, abstract; of a familiar 
subject, familiar ; of a pictorial subject, picturesque. The 
structure of the c Antigone ' is simple; but so also is the 
structure of ' Othello/ though it contains many more ele- 
ments ; the simplicity of both lies in their fulness without 
superfluity. 

163. Whatever is outside the purpose, or the feeling, of 
a scene, a speech, a sentence, or a phrase, whatever may be 
omitted without sacrifice of effect, is a sin against this law. 
I do not say that the incident, description, or dialogue, 
which may be omitted without injury to the unity of the 
work, is necessarily a sin against art ; still less that, even 
when acknowledged as a sin, it may not sometimes be con- 
doned by its success. The law of Simplicity is not the 
only law of art ; and, moreover, audiences are, unhappily, 

1 Address to the Thames, in Denham's ' Cooper's Hill ' : — 

" O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream 
My great example, as it is my theme! 
Though deep yet clear, though gentle yet not dull, 
Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full." 



136 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

so little accustomed to judge works as wholes, and so ready 
to seize upon any detail which, pleases them, no matter how 
incongruously the detail may be placed, 1 that a felicitous 
fault will captivate applause, let critics shake reproving 
heads as they may. Nevertheless the law of Simplicity 
remains unshaken, and ought only to give way to the press- 
ure of the law of Variety. 

164. The drama offers a good opportunity for studying 
the operation of this law, because the limitations of time 
compel the dramatist to attend closely to what is and what 
is not needful for his purpose. A drama must compress 
into two or three hours material which may be diffused 
through three volumes of a novel, because spectators are 
more impatient than readers, and more unequivocally resent 
by their signs of weariness any disregard of economy, which 
in the novel may be skipped. The dramatist having little 
time in which to evolve his story, feels that every scene 
which does not forward the progress of the action or inten- 
sify the interest in the characters is an artistic defect; 2 
though in itself it may be charmingly written, and may 
excite applause, it is away from his immediate purpose. 
And what is true of purposeless scenes and characters which 
divert the current of progress, is equally true, in a minor 
degree, of speeches and sentences which arrest the culmi- 
nating interest by calling attention away to other objects. 
It is an error which arises from a deficient earnestness on 
the writer's part, or from a too pliant facility. The dram- 
atis personce wander in their dialogue, not swayed by the 



1 "Was hilft's, wenn ihr ein Ganzes dargebracht? 

Das Publikum wird es euch doch zerpflucken." (Goethe.) — G. H. L. 
' Faust,' Vorspiel auf dem Theater, 11. 102-103. 

2 " The parts of the action must be so arranged that if any be transposed 
or removed the whole will be broken up and disturbed ; for what proves 
nothing is no part of the whole." — Aristotle, ' Poetics,' VIII., 4, Wharton's 
Translation. 



The Laws of Style. 137 

fluctuations of feeling, but by the author's desire to show 
his wit and wisdom, or else by his want of power to control 
the vagrant suggestions of his fancy. The desire for dis- 
play and the inability to control are weaknesses that lead 
to almost every transgression of Simplicity ; but sometimes 
the transgressions are made in more or less conscious obe- 
dience to the law of Variety, although the highest reach of 
art is to secure variety by an opulent simplicity. 

165. The novelist is not under the same limitations of 
time, nor has he to contend against the same mental im- 
patience on the part of his public. He may therefore linger 
where the dramatist must hurry ; he may digress, and gain 
fresh impetus from the digression, where the dramatist 
would seriously endanger the effect of his scene by retard- 
ing its evolution. The novelist with a prudent prodigality 
may employ descriptions, dialogues, and episodes, which 
would be fatal in a drama. Characters may be introduced 
and dismissed without having any important connection 
.with the plot ; it is enough if they serve the purpose of the 
chapter in which they appear. Although as a matter of 
fine art no character should have a place in a novel unless v 
it form an integral element of the story, and no episode 
should be introduced unless it reflects some strong light on 
the characters or incidents, this is a critical demand which 
only fine artists think of satisfying, and only delicate tastes 
appreciate. For the mass of readers it is enough if they 
are amused ; and indeed all readers, no matter how critical 
their taste, would rather be pleased by a transgression of 
the law than wearied by prescription. 1 Delight condones 
offence. The only question for the writer is, whether the 
offence is so trivial as to be submerged in the delight. And 

1 The question may well be asked at this point whether a law which 
must sometimes be transgressed in order to achieve the very end for which 
it was formulated, can be properly described as a " fundamental law ,? 
(§ 146). Cf. this law with the Principle of Sincerity. 



138 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

he will do well to remember that the greater flexibility be- 
longing to the novel by no means removes the novel from 
the laws which rule the drama. The parts of a novel 
should have organic relations. Push the licence to excess, 
and stitch together a volume of unrelated chapters — a 
patchwork of descriptions, dialogues, and incidents, — no 
one will call that a novel ; and the less the work has of 
this unorganised character the greater will be its value, not 
only in the eyes of critics, but in its effect on the emotions 
of the reader. 
^ 166. Simplicity of structure means organic unity, 1 
whether the organism be simple or complex ; and hence in 
all times the emphasis which critics have laid upon Sim- 
plicity, though they have not unfrequently confounded it 
with narrowness of range. In like manner, as we said just 
now, when treating of diction they have overlooked the fact 
that the simplest must be that which best expresses the 
thought. Simplicity of diction is integrity of speech ; that 
which admits of least equivocation, that which by the clearest 
verbal symbols most readily calls up in the reader's mind 
the images and feelings which the writer wishes to call up. 
Such diction may be concrete or abstract, familiar or tech- 
nical ; its simplicity is determined by the nature of the 
thought. We shall often be simpler in using abstract and 
technical terms than in using concrete and familiar terms 
which by their very concreteness and familiarity call up 
images and feelings foreign to our immediate purpose. If 
we desire the attention to fall upon some general idea we 
only blur its outlines by using words that call up particu- 
lars. Thus, although it may be needful to give some definite 
direction to the reader's thoughts by the suggestion of a 
particular fact, we must be careful not to arrest his atten- 
tion on the fact itself, still less to divert it by calling up 

1 The other laws may profitably be referred to this fundamental prin- 
ciple. 



The Laws of Style. 139 

vivid images of facts unrelated to our present purpose. 
For example, I wish to fix in the reader's mind a con- 
ception of a lonely meditative man walking on the sea- 
shore, and I fall into the vicious style of our day which 
is lauded as word-painting, and write something like 
this : — 

167. "The fishermen mending their storm-beaten boats 
upon the shore would lay down the hammer to gaze after 
him as he passed abstractedly before their huts, his hair 
streaming in the salt breeze, his feet crushing the scattered 
seaweed, his eyes dreamily fixed upon the purple heights of 
the precipitous crags." 

168. Now it is obvious that the details here assembled 
are mostly foreign to my purpose, which has nothing what- 
ever to do with fishermen, storms, boats, seaweeds, or 
purple crags; and by calling up images of these I only 
divert the attention from my thought. Whereas, if it had 
been my purpose to picture the scene itself, or the man's 
delight in it, then the enumeration of details would give 
colour and distinctness to the picture. 

169. The art of a great writer is seen in the perfect fit- 
ness of his expressions. He knows how to blend vividness 
with vagueness, knows where images are needed, and where 
by their vivacity they would be obstacles to the rapid ap- 
preciation of his thought. The value of concrete illustra- 
tion artfully used may be seen illustrated in a passage from 
Macaulay's invective against Frederic the Great : " On the 
head of Frederic is all the blood which was shed in a war 
which raged during many years and in every quarter of the 
globe, the blood of the column at Fontenoy, the blood of 
the mountaineers who were slaughtered at Culloden. The 
evils produced by his wickedness were felt in lands where 
the name of Prussia was unknown ; and in order that he 
might rob a neighbour whom he had promised to defend, 
black men fought on the coast of Coromandel, and red men 



140 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

scalped each other by the Great Lakes of North America.'' l 
Disregarding the justice or injustice of the thought, note 
the singular force and beauty of this passage, delightful 
alike to ear and mind; and observe how its very elaborate- 
ness has the effect of the finest simplicity, because the 
successive pictures are constituents of the general thought, 
and by their vividness render the conclusion more impres- 
sive. Let us suppose him to have written with the vague 
generality of expression much patronised by dignified his- 
torians, and told us that " Frederic was the cause of great 
European conflicts extending over long periods ; and in 
consequence of his political aggression hideous crimes were 
perpetrated in the most distant parts of the globe." This 
absence of concrete images would not have been simplicity, 
inasmuch as the labour of converting the general expres- 
sions into definite meanings would thus have been thrown 
upon the reader. 

170. Pictorial illustration has its dangers, as we daily see 
in the clumsy imitators of Macaulay, who have not the fine 
instinct of style, but obey the vulgar instinct of display, 
and imagine they can produce a brilliant effect by the use 
of strong lights, whereas they distract the attention with 
images alien to the general impression, just as crude col- 
ourists vex the e}^e with importunate splendours. Nay, 
even good writers sometimes sacrifice the large effect of a 
diffusive light to the small effect of a brilliant point. This 
is a defect of taste frequently noticeable in two very good 
writers, De Quincey and Euskin, whose command of ex- » 
pression is so varied that it tempts them into fioritum as 
flexibility of voice tempts singers to sin against simplicity. 
At the close of an eloquent passage De Quincey writes : — 

171. " Gravitation, again, that works without holiday 
for ever, and searches every corner of the universe, what 

1 Essay on ' Frederic the Great.' 



The Laws of Style. 141 

intellect can follow it to its fountain ? And yet, shyer than 
gravitation, less to be counted than the fluxions of sun-dials, 
stealthier than the growth of a forest, are the footsteps of 
Christianity amongst the political workings of man." * 

172. The association of holidays and shyness with an 
idea so abstract as that of gravitation, the use of the learned 
word fluxions to express the movements of the shadows on 
a dial, and the discordant suggestion of stealthiness applied 
to vegetable growth and Christianity, are so many offences 
against simplicity. Let the passage be contrasted with one 
in which wealth of imagery is in accordance with the 
thought it expresses : — 

173. " In the edifices of Man there should be found rev- 
erent worship and following, not only of the spirit which 
rounds the pillars of the forest, and arches the vault of the 
avenue — which gives veining to the leaf and polish to the 
shell, and grace to every pulse that agitates animal organ- 
ization — but of that also which reproves the pillars of the 
earth, and builds up her barren precipices into the coldness 
of the clouds, and lifts her shadowy cones of mountain pur- 
ple into the pale arch of the sky ; for these, and other glo- 
ries more than these, refuse not to connect themselves, in 
his thoughts, with the work of his own hand ; the grey cliff 
loses not its nobleness when it reminds us of some Cyclo- 
pean waste of mural stone ; the pinnacles of the rocky 
promontory arrange themselves, undegraded, into fantastic 
semblances of fortress towers, and even the awful cone of 
the far-off mountain has a melancholy mixed with that of 
its own solitude, which is cast from the images of nameless 
tumuli on white sea-shores, and of the heaps of reedy clay, 
into which chambered cities melt in their mortality." 2 

174. I shall notice but two points in this singularly beau- 
tiful passage. The one is the exquisite instinct of Sequence 

1 ' On Christianity as an Organ of Political Movement.' 

2 Ruskin, ' Seven Lamps of Architecture,' Chap. III. 



142 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

in several of the phrases, not only as to harmony, but as to 
the evolution of the meaning, especially in " builds up her 
barren precipices into the coldness of the clouds, and lifts 
her shadowy cones of mountain purple into the pale arch of 
the sky." The other is the injurious effect of three words 
in the sentence, "for these and other glories more than 
these refuse not to connect themselves in his thoughts." 
Strike out the words printed in italics, and you not only 
improve the harmony, but free the sentence from a disturb- 
ing use of what Euskin has named the " pathetic fallacy." 
There are times in which Nature may be assumed as in 
sympathy with our moods ; and at such times the pathetic 
fallacy is a source of subtle effect. But in the passage just 
quoted the introduction seems to me a mistake : the sim- 
plicity of the thought is disturbed by this hint of an active 
participation of Nature in man's feelings ; it is preserved in 
its integrity by the omission of that hint. 

175. These illustrations will suffice to show how the law 
we are considering will command and forbid the use of con- 
crete expressions and vivid imagery according to the pur- 
pose of the writer. A fine taste guided by Sincerity will 
determine that use. Nothing more than a general rule can 
be laid down. Eloquence, as I said before, cannot spring 
from the simple desire to be eloquent ; the desire usually 
leads to grandiloquence. But Sincerity will save us. We 
have but to remember Montesquieu's advice: "II faut 
prendre garde aux grandes phrases dans les humbles 
sujets ; elles produisent l'eff et d'une masque a barbe blanche 
sur la joue d'un enfant." 

176. Here another warning may be placed. In our anx- 
iety, lest we err on the side of grandiloquence, we may per- 
haps fall into the opposite error of tameness. Sincerity 
will save us here also. Let us but express the thought and 
feeling actually in our minds, then our very grandiloquence 
(if that is our weakness) will have a certain movement and 



The Laivs of Style. 143 

vivacity not without effect, and our tameness (if we are 
tame) will have a gentleness not without its charm. 

177. Finally, let us banish from our critical superstitions 
the notion that chastity of composition, or simplicity of 
Style, is in any respect allied to timidity. There are two 
kinds of timidity, or rather it has two different origins, 
both of which cripple the free movement of thought. The 
one is the timidity of fastidiousness, the other of placid 
stupidity : the one shrinks from originality lest it should 
be regarded as impertinent; the other lest, being new, it 
should be wrong. We detect the one in the sensitive dis- 
creetness of the style. We detect the other in the com- 
placency of its platitudes and the stereotyped commonness 
of its metaphors. The w r riter who is afraid of originality 
feels himself in deep water when he launches into a com- 
monplace. For him who is timid because weak, there is 
no advice, except suggesting the propriety of silence. For 
him who is timid because fastidious, there is this advice : 
get rid of the superstition about chastity, and recognise the 
truth that a style may be simple, even if it move amid 
abstractions, or employ few Saxon words, or abound in con- 
crete images and novel turns of expression. 

iv. The Law of Sequence. 

178. Much that might be included under this head would 
equally well find its place under that of Economy or thatt^ 
of Climax. Indeed it is obvious that to secure perfect 
Economy there must be that sequence of the words which 
will present the least obstacle to the unfolding of the 
thought, and that Climax is only attainable through a prop- 
erly graduated sequence. But there is another element we 
have to take into account, and that is the rhythmical effect 
of Style. Mr. Herbert Spencer in his essay very clearly 
states the law of Sequence, but I infer that he would 



144 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

include it entirely under the law of Economy ; at any rate 
lie treats of it solely in reference to intelligibility, and not 
at all in its scarcely less important relation to harmony. 
" We have a priori reasons/' he says, " for believing that in 
every sentence there is some one order of words more effec- 
tive than any other ; and that this order is the one which 
presents the elements of the proposition in the succession 
in which they may be most readily put together. As in a 
narrative, the events should be stated in such sequence that 
the mind may not have to go backwards and forwards in 
order to rightly connect them ; as in a group of sentences, 
the arrangement should be such, that each of them may be 
understood when it comes, without waiting for subsequent 
ones ; so in every sentence, the sequence of words should 
be that which suggests the constituents of the thought in 
the order most convenient for the building up that thought." 

179. But Style appeals to the emotions as well as to the 
intellect, and the arrangement of words and sentences which 
will be the most economical may not be the most musical, 
and the most musical may not be the most pleasurably 
effective. For Climax and Variety it may be necessary to 
sacrifice something of rapid intelligibility : hence involu- 
tions, antitheses, and suspensions, which disturb the most 
orderly arrangement, may yet, in virtue of their own subtle 
influences, be counted as improvements on that arrange- 
ment. 

180. Tested by the Intellect and the Feelings, the law of 
Sequence is seen to be a curious compound of the two. If 
we isolate these elements for the purposes of exposition, 
we shall find that the principle of the first is much simpler 
and more easy of obedience than the principle of the second. 
It may be thus stated : — 

181. The constituent elements of the conception expressed in the 
sentence and the paragraph should be arranged in strict correspond- 
ence with an inductive or a deductive progression. 



The Laws of Style. 145 

182. All exposition, like all research, is either inductive 
or deductive. It groups particulars so as to lead up to a 
general conception which embraces them all, but which 
could not be fully understood until they had been esti- 
mated ; or else it starts from some general conception, 
already familiar to the mind, and as it moves along, casts 
its light upon numerous particulars, which are thus shown 
to be related to it, but which without that light would have 
been overlooked. 

183. If the reader will meditate on that brief statement 
of the principle, he will, I think, find it explain many 
doubtful points. Let me merely notice one, namely, the 
dispute as to whether the direct or the indirect style should 
be preferred. Some writers insist, and others practise the 
precept without insistence, that the proposition should be 
stated first, and all its qualifications as well as its evidences 
be made to follow; others maintain that the proposition 
should be made to grow up step by step with all its evi- 
dences and qualifications in their due order, and the con- 
clusion disclose itself as crowning the whole. Are not 
both methods right under different circumstances ? If my 
object is to convince you of a general truth, or to impress 
you with a feeling, which you are .not already prepared to 
accept, it is obvious that the most effective method is the 
inductive, which leads your mind upon a culminating wave 
of evidence or emotion to the very point I aim at. But the 
deductive method is best when I wish to direct the light of 
familiar truths and roused emotions, upon new particulars, 
or upon details in unsuspected relation to those truths ; and 
when I wish the attention to be absorbed by these particu- 
lars which are of interest in themselves, not upon the 
general truths which are of no present interest except in as 
far as they light up these details. A growing thought 
requires the inductive exposition, an applied thought the 
deductive, 



146 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

184. This principle, which is of very wide application, is 
subject to two important qualifications — one pressed on it 
by the necessities of Climax and Variety, the other by the 
feebleness of memory, which cannot keep a long hold of 
details unless their significance is apprehended ; so that a 
paragraph of suspended meaning should never be long, and 
when the necessities of the case bring together numerous 
particulars in evidence of the conclusion, they should be so 
arranged as to have culminating force : one clause leading 
up to another, and throwing its impetus into it, instead of 
being linked on to another, and dragging the mind down 
with its weight. 

185. It is surprising how few men understand that Style 
is a Fine Art ; and how few of those who are fastidious in 
their diction give much care to the arrangement of their 
sentences, paragraphs, and chapters — in a word, to Compo- 
sition. The painter distributes his masses with a view to 
general effect ; so does the musician : writers seldom do so. 
Nor do they usually arrange the members of their sentences 
in that sequence which shall secure for each its proper 
emphasis and its determining influence on the others — 
influence reflected back and influence projected forward. 
As an example of the. charm that lies in unostentatious 
antiphony, consider this passage from Euskin : — " Origi- 
nality in expression does not depend on invention of new 
words ; nor originality in poetry on invention of new meas- 
ures ; nor in painting on invention of new colours or new 
modes of using them. The chords of music, the harmonies 
of colour, the general principles of the arrangement of 
sculptural masses, have been determined long ago, and in 
all probability cannot be added to any more than they can 
be altered." Men write like this by instinct ; and I by no 
means wish to suggest that writing like this can be pro- 
duced by rule. What I suggest is, that in this, as in every 
other Pine Art, instinct does mostly find itself in accordance 



The Laws of Style. 147 

with, rule; and a knowledge of rules helps to direct the 
blind gropings of feeling, and to correct the occasional 
mistakes of instinct. If, after working his way through 
a long and involved sentence in which the meaning is rough 
hewn, the writer were to try its effect upon ear and intel- 
lect, he might see its defects and re-shape it into beauty 
and clearness. But in general men shirk this labour, partly 
because it is irksome, and partly because they have no 
distinct conception of the rules which would make the 
labour light. 

186. The law of Sequence, we have seen, rests upon the 
two requisites of Clearness and Harmony. Men with a 
delicate sense of rhythm will instinctively distribute their 
phrases in an order that falls agreeably on the ear, without 
monotony, and without an echo of other voices ; and men 
with a keen sense of logical relation will instinctively ar- 
range their sentences in an order that best unfolds the mean- 
ing. The French are great masters of the law of Sequence, 
and, did space permit, I could cite many excellent examples. 
One brief passage from Eoyer Collard must suffice : — " Les 
faits que F observation laisse epars et muets la causalite les 
rassemble, les enchaine, leur pr£te un langage. Chaque fait 
revele celui qui a precede, prophetise celui qui va suivre." 

187. The ear is only a guide to the harmony of a period, 
and often tempts us into the feebleness of expletives or 
approximative expressions for the sake of a cadence. Yet, 
on the other hand, if we disregard the subtle influences of 
harmonious arrangement, our thoughts lose much of the 
force which would otherwise result from their logical sub- 
ordination. The easy evolution of thought in a melodious 
period, quietly taking up on its way a variety of incidental 
details, yet never lingering long enough over them to divert 
the attention or to suspend the continuous crescendo of 
interest, but by subtle influences of proportion allowing 
each clause of the sentence its separate significance, is the 



148 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

product of a natural gift, as rare as the gift of music, or of 
poetry. 1 But until men come to understand that Style is 
an art, and an amazingly difficult art, they will continue 
with careless presumption to tumble out their sentences as 
they would tilt stones from a cart, trusting very much to 
accident or gravitation for the shapeliness of the result. I 
will write a passage which may serve as an example of 
what I mean, although the defect is purposely kept within 
very ordinary limits : — 

188. "To construct a sentence with many loosely and 
not obviously dependent clauses, each clause containing an 
important meaning or a concrete image the vivacity of 
which, like a boulder in a shallow stream, disturbs the 
equable current of thought, — and in such a case the more 
beautiful the image the greater the obstacle, so that the 
laws of simplicity and economy are violated by it, — while 
each clause really requires for its interpretation a propo- 
sition that is however kept suspended till the close, — is a 
defect." 

189. The weariness produced by such writing as this is 
very great, and yet the recasting of the passage is easy. 
Thus: — 

" It is a defect when a sentence is constructed with many 
loosely and not obviously dependent clauses, each of which 
requires for its interpretation a proposition that is kept 
suspended till the close; and this defect is exaggerated 
when each clause contains an important meaning, or a con- 
crete image which, like a boulder in a shallow stream, dis- 
turbs the equable current of thought : the more beautiful 
the image, the greater its violation of the laws of simplicity 
and economy." 

190. In this second form the sentence has no long suspen- 
sion of the main idea, no diversions of the current. The 

iThe sentence is, and was doubtless intended to be, an illustration of 
the principle. 



The Laws of Style. 149 

proposition is stated and illustrated directly, and the mind 
of the reader follows that of the writer. How injurious it 
is to keep the key in your pocket until all the locks in suc- 
cession have been displayed may be seen in such a sentence 
as this : — 

" Phantoms of lost power, sudden intuitions, and shadowy 
restorations of forgotten feelings, sometimes dim and per- 
plexing, sometimes by bright but furtive glimpses, some- 
times by a full and steady revelation overcharged with light 
— throw us back in a moment upon scenes and remem- 
brances that we have left full thirty years behind us." 1 

191. Had De Quincy liberated our minds from suspense 
by first presenting the thought which first arose in his own 
mind, — namely, that we are thrown back upon scenes and 
remembrances by phantoms of lost power, &c. — the beauty 
of his language in its pregnant suggestiveness would have 
been felt at once. Instead of that, he makes us accompany 
him in darkness, and when the light appears we have to 
travel backward over the ground again to see what we have 
passed. The passage continues : — 

" In solitude, and chiefly in the solitudes of nature, and, 
above all, amongst the great and enduring features of nature, 
such as mountains and quiet dells, and the lawny recesses 
of forests, and the silent shores of lakes, features with 
which (as being themselves less liable to change) our feel- 
ings have a more abiding association — under these circum- 
stances it is, that such evanescent hauntings of our past 
and forgotten selves are most apt to startle and to waylay 
us." 

192. The beauty of this passage seems to me marred by 
the awkward yet necessary interruption, " under these cir- 
cumstances it is," which would have been avoided by open- 
ing the sentence with " such evanescent hauntings of our 

1 De Quincey, ' Literary Reminiscences,' Chap. VIII. 



150 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

forgotten selves are most apt to startle us in solitudes/' &c. 
Compare the effect of directness in the following : — 

"This was one, and the most common shape of extin- 
guished power, from which Coleridge fled to the great city. 
But sometimes the same decay came back upon his heart in 
the more poignant shape of intimations, and vanishing 
glimpses, recovered for one moment from the paradise of 
youth, and from the fields of joy and power, over which for 
him, too certainly, he felt that the cloud of night had settled 
for ever." 

193. Obedience to the law of Sequence gives strength by 
giving clearness and beauty of rhythm ; it economises force 
and creates music. A very trifling disregard of it will mar 
an effect. See an example both of obedience and trifling 
disobedience in the following passage from Ruskin : — 

" People speak in this working age, when they speak from 
their hearts, as if houses and lands, and food and raiment 
were alone useful, and as if Sight, Thought, and Admiration 
were all profitless, so that men insolently call themselves 
Utilitarians, who w^ould turn, if they had their way, them- 
selves and their race into vegetables ; men who think, as far 
as such can be said to think, that the meat is more than the 
life and the raiment than the body, who look to the earth 
as a stable and to its fruit as fodder ; vinedressers and hus- 
bandmen, who love the corn they grind, and the grapes they 
crush, better than the gardens of the angels upon the slopes 
of Eden." 1 

194. It is instructive to contrast the dislocated sentence, 
"who would turn, if they had their way, themselves and 
their race," with the sentence which succeeds it, " men who 
think, as far as such can be said to think, that the meat," 
&c. In the latter the parenthetic interruption is a source 
of power : it dams the current to increase its force ; in the 

1 « Modern Painters,' II., Sect. 1, Chap. I. 



The Laws of Style. 151 

former the inversion is a loss of power : it is a dissonance 
to the ear and a diversion of the thought. 

195. As illustrations of Sequence in composition, two 
passages may be quoted from Macaulay which display the 
power of pictorial suggestions when, instead of diverting 
attention from the main purpose, they are arranged with 
progressive and culminating effect. 

196. " Such or nearly such was the change which passed 
on the Mogul empire during the forty years which followed 
the death of Aurungzebe. A succession of nominal sov- 
ereigns, sunk in indolence and debauchery, sauntered away 
life in secluded palaces, chewing bang, fondling concubines, 
and listening to buffoons. A succession of ferocious in- 
vaders descended through the western passes, to prey on 
the defenceless w T ealth of Hindostan. A Persian conqueror 
crossed the Indus, marched through the gates of Delhi, and 
bore away in triumph those treasures of which the magnifi- 
cence had astounded Koe and Bernier, the Peacock Throne, 
on which the richest jewels of G-olconda had been disposed 
by the most skilful hands of Europe, and the inestimable 
Mountain of Light, which, after many strange vicissitudes, 
lately shone in the bracelet of Eunjeet Sing, and is now 
destined to adorn the hideous idol of Orissa. The Afghan 
soon followed to complete the work of devastation which 
the Persian had begun. The warlike tribes of Eajpootana 
threw off the Mussulman yoke. A band of mercenary 
soldiers occupied Eohilcund. The Seiks ruled on the Indus. 
The Jauts spread dismay along the Jumnah. The high 
lands which border on the western sea-coast of India poured 
forth a yet more formidable race, a race which was long the 
terror of every native power, and which, after many des- 
perate and doubtful struggles, yielded only to the fortune 
and genius of England. It was under the reign of Aurung- 
zebe that this wild clan of plunderers first descended from 
their mountains ; and soon after his death, every corner of 



152 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

his wide empire learned to tremble at the mighty name of 
the Mahrattas. Many fertile viceroyalties were entirely 
subdued by them. Their dominions stretched across the 
peninsula from sea to sea. Mahratta captains reigned at 
Poonah, at Gualior, in Guzerat, in Berar, and in Tanjore." 1 

197. Such prose as this affects us like poetry. The 
pictures and suggestions might possibly have been gathered 
together by any other historian ; but the artful succession, 
the perfect sequence, could only have been found by a fine 
writer. I pass over a few paragraphs, and pause at this 
second example of a sentence simple in structure, though 
complex in its elements, fed but not overfed with material, 
and almost perfect in its cadence and logical connection. 
" Scarcely any man, however sagacious, would have thought 
it possible that a trading company, separated from India by 
fifteen thousand miles of sea, and possessing in India only 
a few acres for purposes of commerce, would, in less than 
a hundred years, spread its empire from Cape Comorin to 
the eternal snow of the Himalayas ; would compel Mahratta 
and Mahommedan to forget their mutual feuds in common 
subjection ; would tame down even those wild races which 
had resisted the most powerful of the Moguls ; and having 
united under its laws a hundred millions of subjects, would 
carry its victorious arms far to the east of the Burram- 
pooter, and far to the west of the Hydaspes, dictate terms 
of peace at the gates of Ava, and seat its vassal on the 
throne of Candahar." 

198. Let us see the same principle exhibited in a passage 
at once pictorial and argumentative. "We know more 
certainly every day," says Buskin, 2 "that whatever appears 
to us harmful in the universe has some beneficent or neces- 
sary operation ; that the storm which destroys a harvest 
brightens the sunbeams for harvests yet unsown, and that 
the volcano which buries a city preserves a thousand from 

1 ' Lord Give.' 2 ' Stones of Venice,' II., chap. VI. 



The Laws of Style. 153 

destruction. But the evil is not for the time less fearful, 
because we have learned it to be necessary ; and we easily 
understand the timidity Or the tenderness of the spirit 
which would withdraw itself from the presence of destruc- 
tion, and create in its imagination a world of which the 
peace should be unbroken, in which the sky should not 
darken nor the sea rage, in which the leaf should not 
change nor the blossom wither. That man is greater, how- 
ever, who contemplates with an equal mind the alterna- 
tions of terror and of beauty; who, not rejoicing less 
beneath the sunny sky, can bear also to watch the bars of 
twilight narrowing on the horizon ; and, not less sensible to 
the blessing of the peace of nature, can rejoice in the mag- 
nificence of the ordinances by which that peace is protected 
and secured. But separated from both by an immeasurable 
distance would be the man who delighted in convulsion and 
disease for their own sake ; who found his daily food in the 
disorder of nature mingled with the suffering of humanity ; 
and watched joyfully at the right hand of the Angel whose 
appointed work is to destroy as well as to accuse, while the 
corners of the House of feasting were struck by the wind 
from the wilderness." 

199. I will now cite a passage from Burke, which will 
seem tame after the pictorial animation of the passages 
from Macaulay and Buskin ; but which, because it is simply 
an exposition of opinions addressed to the understanding, 
will excellently illustrate the principle I am enforcing. He 
is treating of the dethronement of kings. " As it was not 
made for common abuses, so it is not to be agitated by 
common minds. The speculative line of demarcation, where 
obedience ought to end, and resistance must begin, is faint, 
obscure, and not easily definable. It is not a single act, or 
a single event, which determines it. Governments must be 
abused and deranged indeed, before it can be thought of ; 
and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the expe- 



154 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

rience of the past. When things are in that lamentable 
condition, the nature of the disease is to indicate the remedy- 
to those whom nature has qualified to administer in extremi- 
ties this critical, ambiguous, bitter potion to a distempered 
state. Times and occasions, and provocations, will teach 
their own lessons. The wise will determine from the grav- 
ity of the case ; the irritable from sensibility to oppression ; 
the high-minded from disdain and indignation at abusive 
power in unworthy hands; the brave and bold from the 
love of honourable danger in a generous cause : but, with 
or without right, a revolution will be the very last resource 
of the thinking and the good." 1 

200. As a final example I will cite a passage from M. 
Taine : — " De \k encore cette insolence contre les inf erieurs, 
et ce mepris vers6 d'etage en 6tage depuis le premier jus- 
qu'au dernier. Lorsque dans une societe la loi consacre les 
conditions inegales, personne n'est exempt d'insulte; le 
grand seigneur, outrage par le roi, outrage le noble qui out- 
rage le peuple ; la nature humaine est humilie a tous les 
stages, et la society n'est plus qu'un commerce d'affronts." 

201. The law of Sequence by no means prescribes that 
we should invariably state the proposition before its quali- 
fications — the thought before its illustrations; it merely 
prescribes that we should arrange our phrases in the order 
of logical dependence and rhythmical cadence, the order 
best suited for clearness and for harmony. The nature of 
the thought will determine the one, our sense of euphony 
the other. 

v. The Law of Climax. 

202. We need not pause long over this ; it is generally 
understood. The condition of our sensibilities is such that to 
produce their effect stimulants must be progressive in inten- 

1 'Reflections on the Revolution in France,' p. 35, Clarendon ed. 



The Laws of Style. 155 

sity and varied in kind. On this condition rest the laws of 
Climax and Variety. The phrase or image which in one position 
will have a mild power of occupying the thoughts, or stimulating 
the emotions, loses this power if made to succeed one of like kind 
but more agitating influence, and will gain an accession of power if 
it be artfully placed on the wave of a climax. We laugh at 

"Then came Dalhousie, that great God of War, 
Lieutenant- Colonel to the Earl of Mar," 

because of the relaxation which follows the sudden tension 
of the mind; but if we remove the idea of the colonelcy 
from this position of anti-climax, the same couplet becomes 
energetic rather than ludicrous : — 

"Lieutenant- Colon el to the Earl of Mar, 
Then came Dalhousie, that great God of War." 

I have selected this strongly marked case, instead of several 
feeble passages which might be chosen from the first book 
at hand, wherein carelessness allows the sentences to close 
with the least important phrases, and the style droops under 
frequent anti-climax. Let me now cite a passage from 
Macaulay which vividly illustrates the effect of Climax : — 
203. " Never, perhaps, was the change which the progress 
of civilisation has produced in the art of war more strikingly 
illustrated than on that day. Ajax beating down the Trojan 
leader with a rock which two ordinary men could scarcely 
lift, Horatius defending the bridge against an army, Rich- 
ard, the Lion-hearted, spurring along the whole Saracen line 
without finding an enemy to withstand his assault, Robert 
Bruce crushing with one blow the helmet and head of Sir 
Henry Bohun in sight of the whole array of England and 
Scotland, such are the heroes of a dark age. [Here is an 
example of suspended meaning, where the suspense intensi- 
fies the effect, because each particular is vividly appre- 
hended in itself, and all culminate in the conclusion ; they 



156 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

do not complicate the thought, or puzzle us, they only 
heighten expectation.] In such an age bodily vigour is the 
most indispensable qualification of a warrior. At Landen 
two poor sickly beings, who, in a rude state of society, would 
have been regarded as too puny to bear any part in combats, 
were the souls of two great armies. In some heathen coun- 
tries they would have been exposed while infants. In 
Christendom they would, six hundred years earlier, have 
been sent to some quiet cloister. But their lot had fallen 
on a time when men had discovered that the strength of the 
muscles is far inferior in value to the strength of the mind. 
It is probable that, among the hundred and twenty thousand 
soldiers who were marshalled round Neerwinden under all 
the standards of Western Europe, the two feeblest in body 
were the hunchbacked dwarf, who urged forward the fiery 
onset of France, and the asthmatic skeleton who covered 
the slow retreat of England." l 

204. The effect of Climax is very marked in the drama. 
Every speech, every scene, every act, should have its pro- 
gressive sequence. Nothing can be more injudicious than 
a trivial phrase following an energetic phrase, a feeble 
thought succeeding a burst of passion, or even a passionate 
thought succeeding one more passionate. Yet this error is 
frequently committed. 

205. In the drama all laws of Style are more imperious 
than in fiction or prose of any kind, because the art is more 
intense. But Climax is demanded in every species of com- 
position, for it springs from a psychological necessity. It 
is pressed upon, however, by the law of Variety in a way 
to make it far from safe to be too rigidly followed. It 
easily degenerates into monotony. 

i < History of England,' Chap. XX. 



The Laws of Style. 157 



vi. The Law of Variety. 

206. Some one, after detailing an elaborate recipe for a 
salad, wound up tlie enumeration of ingredients and quan- 
tities with the advice to " open the window and throw it all 
away." This advice might be applied to the foregoing 
enumeration of the laws of Style, unless these were sup- 
plemented by the important law of Variety. A style which 
rigidly interpreted the precepts of economy, simplicity, 
sequence, and climax, which rejected all superfluous words 
and redundant ornaments, adopted the easiest and most 
logical arrangement, and closed every sentence and every 
paragraph with a climax, might be a very perfect bit of 
mosaic, but would want the glow and movement of a living 
mind. Monotony would settle on it like a paralysing frost. 
A series of sentences in which every phrase was a distinct 
thought, would no more serve as pabulum for the mind, 
than portable soup freed from all the fibrous tissues of 
meat and vegetable would serve as food for the body. Ani- 
mals perish from hunger in the presence of pure albumen ; 
and minds would lapse into idiocy in the presence of un- 
adulterated thought. 1 But without invoking extreme cases, 
let us simply remember the psychological fact that it is as 
easy for sentences to be too compact as for food to be too 
concentrated ; and that many a happy negligence, which to 
microscopic criticism may appear defective, will be the 
means of giving clearness and grace to a style. Of course 
the indolent indulgence in this laxity robs style of all grace 
and power. But monotony in the structure of sentences, 
monotony of cadence, monotony of climax, monotony any- 
where, necessarily defeats the very aim and end of style ; 
it calls attention to the manner; it blunts the sensibilities: 
it renders excellencies odious. 

1 Cf. De Quincey's essay on ' Style/ Part I. 



V 



158 The Principles of Success in Literature. 

207. " Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts 
ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all 
shadow ceases to be enjoyed as light. A white canvas can- 
not produce an effect of sunshine ; the painter must darken 
it in some places before he can make it look luminous in 
others ; nor can an uninterrupted succession of beauty pro- 
duce the true effect of beauty ; it must be foiled by inferi- 
ority before its own power can be developed. Nature has 
for the most part mingled her inferior and noble elements 
as she mingles sunshine with shade, giving due use and 
influence to both, and the painter who chooses to remove 
the shadow, perishes in the burning desert he has created. 
The truly high and beautiful art of Angelico is continually 
refreshed and strengthened by his frank portraiture of the 
most ordinary features of his brother monks and of the 
recorded peculiarities of ungainly sanctity ; but the modern 
German and Eaphaelesque schools lose all honour and noble- 
ness in barber-like admiration of handsome faces, and have, 
in fact, no real faith except in straight noses, and curled 
hair. Paul Veronese opposes the dwarf to the soldier, and 
the negress to the queen ; Shakspeare places Caliban beside 
Miranda, and Autolycus beside Perdita; but the vulgar 
idealist withdraws his beauty to the safety of the saloon, 
and his innocence to the seclusion of the cloister ; he pre- 
tends that he does this in delicacy of choice and purity of 
sentiment, while in truth he has neither courage to front 
the monster, nor wit enough to furnish the knave." l 

208. And how is Variety to be secured ? The plan is simple, 
but like many other simple plans, is not without difficulty. It 
is for the writer to obey the great cardinal principle of Sincerity, 
and be brave enough to express himself in his own way, follow- 
ing the moods of his own mind, rather than endeavouring to catch 
the accents of another, or to adapt himself to some standard of 

1 Ruskin, ' Modern Painters,' III., Chap. III. 



The Laivs of Style. 159 

taste. No man really thinks and feels monotonously. If lie is 
monotonous in his manner of setting forth his thoughts and feel- 
ings, that is either because he has not learned the art of writing, 
or because he is more or less consciously imitating the manner of 
others. The subtle play of thought will give movement and life 
to his style if he do not clog it with critical superstitions. I do 
not say that it will give him grace and power ; I do not say that 
relying on perfect sincerity will make him a fine writer, because 
sincerity will not give talent; but I say that sincerity will give 
him all the power that is possible to him, and will secure him the 
inestimable excellence of Variety. 



INDEX. 



[The figures refer to the numbered paragraphs of the text.] 



Accuracy, 115. 

Actors, 10. 

^Esthetic nature, 25. 

^Esthetic truth, 29. 

Angelico, 74, 94. 

Aristotle, 135, 164 note. 

Arnold, 6 note, 122 note. 

Art, 3, 29 note, 35, 37, 38, 59, 61, 83, 

91, 103; Style in, 185, 187; Truth 

in, 142, 144. 
Artists, 45 note, 60. 
Authenticity, 33, 34. 

Bailey, 37. 

Baldwin, 61 note. 

Beauty, 25, 28, 29; Principle of, 124- 

208. 
Biot, 140. 

Blake, 88 and note. 
Boileau, 140. 
Bosanquet, 52 note. 
Bowles, 17 note. 
Brooke, 6 note. 

Buff on, 126 note, 134 note, 140. 
Bulwer-Lytton, 51 note. 
Burke, 43 note, 82-85, 199. 

Cadence, 153, 197, 201. 

Canons, fixed, 130. 

Cervantes, 17. 

Character drawing, 22. 

Cicero, 128, 156. 

Classics, 22 ; Imitation of the, 131, 135.. 

Clearness, 156, 186. 

Climax, 150, 178, 202-205. 

Compilers, 56, 123. 

Composition, 90, 145, 185. 

Conciseness, 156-158. 

Concreteness, 167-169, 175. 



Consistency, 142. 

Conventionalism, 94. 

Creation, Artistic, 60. 

Criticism, 129; Philosophy of, 127, 

128, 137. 
Culture, 22. 
Cuyp, 94. 

Dante, 17, 88 note. 

Deductive sequence, 181-184. 

Denham, 162 note. 

De Quincey, 6 note, 125, 131, 132 note, 

140 note, 170, 171, 190, 191, 192, 206 

note. 
Descartes, 140. 
Detailism, 94. 
Dewey, 61 note. 
Diction, 166. 

Difficulty overcome, 144. 
Dowden, 6 note. 
Drama, 22, 129 and note, 144, 154, 

164, 204, 205. 
Dramatic genius, 122. 
Dumas, 12, 21. 

Economy, 147 note, 150, 151-158, 178. 

Effect, 97, 98. 

Eliot, George, 75 note, 77 note. 

Eloquence, 114, 121. 

Emerson, 50, 107, 118, 122 note. 

Euphony, 201. 

Everett, 61 note. 

Experience, 33-35, 38 ; Organized, 47, 

48, 66. 
Experiment, 62. 
Expression, 124. 



Fabriano, 142 note. 
Failure, 19. 



161 



162 



Index. 



Fancy, 120. 
" Fine Writing," 114. 
French classics, 135. 
Freytag, 129 note. 

Galileo, 141. 

Galton, 43 note, 45 note. 

Genins, 38, 46, 56, 88, 89, 91, 92. 

Genesis, 157, 158. 

Goethe, 7, 16, 18, 51 note, 71 note, 74 

note, 107 note, 163 note. 
Gurney, 84 note. 

Harmony, 158, 178, 186, 187. 
Hegel, 29 note, 51 note. 
Helps, Arthur, 125. 
Heroes, 50, 51 note. 
Hobbes, 140. 
Homer, 17. 
Horace, 103. 
Hume, 140. 
Humor, 22, 122. 

Ideal, 20. 

Idealism, 93, 207. 

Images, 83-85, 92 ; Visual, 43 note, 44, 

45 and note, 83, 84 and note, 85. 
Imagination, 39, 43, 44, 45 and note, 

46, 59-75, 116-120. 
Imitation, 30, 128-137. 
Imitators, 11, 12, 36, 56, 57, 62. 
Individuality, 35, 107 and note. 
Inductive sequence, 181-184. 
Inference, 39, 41. 
Insight, 30, 31, 38, 39. 
Instinct, 185. 
Invention, 22, 62, 87. 
Irritability of authors, 23, 24. 

James, 43 note, 45 note, 56 note. 
Johnson, 21, "61 and note, 131. 

Kant, 20, 140. 

Laplace, 21, 140. 

Latinisms, 131, 133. 

Laurie, 6 note. 

Laws of Style, 146-208. 

Lewes, 22 note, 39 note, 61 note, 95 

note, 96 note, 129 note, 130 note, 

134 note. 



Literature, 1-6, 15, 31, 32, 122 ; Classes 
of, 56 ; Definition of, 6 note ; Laws 
of, 25-29. 

Longinus, 128, 157 and note. 

Luini, 94. 

Macaulay, 131, 133, 169, 195, 202, 203. 

Masaccio, 110. 

Maxims in Art, 128, 129. 

Memory, 86, 87, 90-92, 125. 

Mieris, 94. 

Mill, J. S., 85 note. 

Milton, 84, 131. 

Models, 128-131. 

Moliere, 8, 94. 

Monotony, 206. 

Montesquieu, 175. 

Morley, J., 6 note. 

Murillo, 74. 

Nature, 17 note ; Beauty of, 52 and 

note; and Natural, 94. 
Newman, 6 note. 
Newton, 48, 61, 80. 
Novel, 23, 165. 
Novelist, 144. 
Novel writing, 22. 

Old Masters, The, 109 note. 
Oratory, 108 and note. 
Originality, 22, 107, 111, 130. 

Paintings, 109, 110, 142, 145. 

Pascal, 140. 

Pater, 6 note. 

Pathetic fallacy, 174. 

Paul Veronese, 207. 

Perception, 39, 40. 

Permanent elements in Literature, 17, 

18. 
Phidias, 94. 
Philosophers, 46. 

Philosophy, 60, 61, 63; Style in, 138. 
Piloty, 95. 
Plato, 135. 
Poet, Aim of, 64. 
Poetical imagery, 116. 
Poetry and Mathematics, 61 and note ; 

and Science, 67, 70. 
Poets, 45, 46, 48, 52. 



Index, 



163 



Pope, 116. 
Posnett, 6 note. 
Posterity, Writing for, 18. 
Prose, 197. 
Public, The, 99. 
Public opinion, 114. 

Quintilian, 128. 

Kaphael, 109, 110. 
Realism, 37, 93-95. 
Reasoning, 39, 42-44. 
Redundancy, 155-157. 
Rhythm, 153, 178, 185, 186, 193, 201. 
Royer-Collard, 186. 
Ruskin, 90, 91, 117, 120, 122 note, 137 
note, 170, 173, 174, 185, 193, 198, 207. 

Saxon Words, 161. 

Scaliger, 20. 

Science, 41, 62, 63, 65. 

Scientist, Style of the, 126. 

Scott, 74. 

Selection, 64, 74, 87-90, 124, 125, 161. 

Sentences, Short, 156, 158. 

Sequence, 150, 174, 178-201. 

Shakspeare, 49-52, 61, 94, 207. 

Signs, 43, 44, 45. 

Simplicity, 150, 159-177. 

Sincerity, 25, 27, 29, 97-123, 133, 134, 

140, 175, 176, 208. 
Sophocles, 17. 
Spencer, 147 and note, 178 and note. 



Spinoza, 140. 

Style, 124-208; is the man, 134. 
Success, 13, 19, 54, 112. 
Suspense, 187-192, 203. 
Swinburne, 88 note. 
Sympathy, 38, 103. 

Tacitus, 156. 

Taine, 6 note, 74 note, 200. 

Talent, 7-10, 56. 

Taste, Public, 16, 17, 111. 

Teniers, 94. 

Tennyson, 37. 

Thackeray, 35, 131. 

Timidity, 177. 

Titian, 37, 74, 93, 110, 128. 

Treatment, 142-145. 

Turner, 90. 

Tyndall, 61 note. 

Unity, 162, 163; Organic, 166. 

Value of Literature, 33. 

Variety, 150, 163, 164, 202, 205, 206- 

208. 
Verisimilitude, 143. 
Vision, 25, 27, 29, 30-96, 114-122. 

Wit, 141. 

Wordsworth, 17 note, 78-80 and note, 
119. 

Young, 77. 



GEORGE HENRY LEWES 



THE 



Principles of Success 



LITERATURE 



EDITED 
WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 

BY 

FEED 1ST. SCOTT, Ph.D. 

Assistant Professor of Rhetoric in the University of Michigan 



Boston 

ALLYN AND BACON 
1891 



ubraky 




